Patrol Boys

The year is 1953 or 1954, the month September or May. Butler Grade School is letting out for lunch or the end of the day. A horde of lower-grade kids (regard the bikes, the shirts and crew cuts!) is raring to dash home, but holding them back is the last guardian of their safety at school, the patrol boy.



(By the way, click any of these pictures, and they expand.)

This patrol boy is Harry Hyndman, a member of '58 who went on to be a research scientist at Monsanto and an area director for Berean Mission, both in the St. Louis area. Currently he teaches physics, chemistry, and biology at Western Christian Academy. Harry says that work may be fallout from the days when he, Steve Dilts, and Tom Brydges assisted Guy Krummel in the SHS physics labs.

The picture ran in the Citizens Tribune, a weekly Springfield paper. You may see more like it in the Grade School Pictures section of the '58 Web site or in an amazing set of books, the Springfield History Series, printed by G. Bradley Publishing.

PS: Schools now have patrol girls, and that's a good change, too.