A boy of about 10, dressed in a bright red Chicago Bulls T-shirt and shorts, pedals his bike hard toward the street corner.
“Off! Walk it,” commands Ed Salutric, a 69-year-old former bakery worker who presides over the intersection of Ardmore and Fullerton Avenues in Glendale Heights, where he has served as crossing guard for six years.
The boy hesitates for a moment, perhaps considering whether to risk Salutric’s wrath and bolt across the street. But then he hops off his bike and walks beside it.
There’s no doubt who’s in charge of the busy intersection. Salutric alternates between holding back impatient children on their way to nearby Reskin Elementary School, at 1555 Ardmore Ave., and hoisting his hand-held stop sign to halt drivers with an itchy pedal foot.
Salutric has a few rules he imparts to all pupils, which he expects them to obey without question.
“No bouncing the ball in the street, and they walk their bikes across the street,” he says.
Salutric explains that he doesn’t want the children playing with a ball and perhaps knocking it into the waiting traffic.
Bike riders must hoof it because he doesn’t want anybody run down from behind or hurt in a collision.
Children, as they are wont to do, sometimes don’t want to listen at first and try to test Salutric’s authority. Most usually learn quickly to toe the line, but a few flout the rules.
Salutric has a ready answer: “When kids get out of line, I just tell them if they don’t straighten out, I’ll be down at school the next day and tell the principal.”
He was having problems with a group of boys who were always fighting. He described them to the principal, who was out that evening to watch.
“He came back the next day and said everything (was) straightened out-and it was,” Salutric says.
On another occasion, a few older boys who moved on to junior high school came back to taunt Salutric. They rode their bikes in the street for three days and refused to heed his orders.
“They told me they don’t have to listen to me because they don’t go to school here any longer,” he says.
Salutric had a good remedy. On the third day, he stopped a passing police car and told the officer of the transgressors.
“The officer said they had to follow the rules,” Salutric says.
A “doubting Thomas” called the police to see if he was under Salutric’s jurisdiction and was told to follow his orders.
“He came back and apologized to me,” Salutric says.
For the most part, however, Salutric has good relationships with the children and the many motorists he waves to as they pass by.
“Nice people, nice children. That’s what I like most about this job,” he says, then good-naturedly chides two latecomers to hurry up.
Salutric wasn’t sure that he wanted the post at first. He retired in 1987 from his job as production manager for a large Chicago bakery. Six months later, when he returned home to Glendale Heights from a visit to his native Fairbanks, Pa., there was a letter from the police department asking if he was interested in becoming a crossing guard. A police officer he knew had suggested that he be contacted.
“I called them and said I’d try it out,” he recalls. “Since then I’ve been out here.”
Salutric, who is paid by the Glendale Heights Police Department, puts in a morning shift from 8:35 to 9:10 and an afternoon shift from 3:40 to 4:10.
He has missed work only three times in his six years. When Salutric wasn’t out on the corner one day in March because of a death in the family, the children asked the police officer taking his place where he was, he says.
Salutric’s reliability wins praise from Reskin Principal David Beard.
“I see him out there all the time, in all kinds of weather,” Beard says.
His near-perfect attendance is made easier by the fact his house sits on the corner where works. It also helps make frigid weather easier. Salutric simply parks his car on the side street and waits inside until the children come.
Salutric was born in Southwest, Pa., and his family moved around among several coal-mining towns. After graduating from high school, he worked in the mines, 750 feet below the surface. He didn’t like it.
“You’d go down in a cage like an elevator. When that thing lets go, your whole stomach goes out.”
He joined the Navy in 1940 and was assigned to a training base in upstate New York, where he spent most of his time going to school to study engineering.
He was given a hardship discharge in early 1942 because his mother and father were seriously ill. He had to support the family, and he came to Chicago in search of work.
“I just didn’t think there was a future in coal mines, which panned out to be correct,” he says.
Salutric took a couple part-time jobs, including working nights for the U.S. Postal Service riding a mail train between Chicago and Ft. Wayne, Ind. He also worked at a catalog store shipping out orders.
He met a man in 1944 who told him about a job at the former Burny Brothers bakery. “I was getting up in age, and I knew if I got married, my wife wouldn’t want me to travel.”
He started as a baker’s helper and worked his way up. He would spend his breaks trying to make coffee cakes and sweet rolls so he could move up to become a baker. His first attempt to make a braided coffee cake was a disaster. When he tied the three strands, they made a giant knot.
To his horror, one of the three Burny brothers saw his mistake and stormed over. “He threw (the coffee cake) across the bench and said, `If you can’t make them any better than this, there’s the door.’ “
Salutric didn’t say anything, then took the lump of dough back to the bench and kept trying. About 20 minutes later, Burny returned and asked Salutric if anyone had ever showed him how to braid the dough.
“I told him I was trying to make it on my own,” he says. Burny sat down at the bench and gave Salutric his first lesson on the art of braiding. “We hit it off real well after that,” he says.
Salutric still does a lot of baking in his spare time. Sometimes he turns out oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for the children at his corner.
That sort of treatment has made him a favorite of most students. “He’s nice,” says Connie Moloney, 10, a 4th grader at Reskin. “He gets up this early every morning to help us across the street.”
Her friend Rachel Edwards, 9, a 3rd grader, agreed. “He always says `Hi,’ and he always talks to us, asks how we’re doing.”
That friendliness has made Salutric the target of a few playful snowballs in the winter. “I tell them one more time and I’ll make one, and mine will be bigger than theirs,” he says with a laugh.
Salutric says no child has ever been hurt on his watch. He keeps his eyes open to make sure oncoming cars stop, and he plays it safe. There have been times when drivers ignored his stop sign and went through the intersection. There’s not much he can do then except hold the children back, he says.
In January, he had a close call. A woman apparently didn’t see the stop sign and kept barreling in on the children out in the street.
“I just got the children to the side in time,” he recalls.
Salutric is especially alert for fire trucks from the station up the street or ambulances rushing to the nearby hospital. “The minute I hear the siren, that’s when I’m really on guard. That’s when I really hold them back. No one goes across.”
Parents especially appreciate his watchful gaze. Over the years, he has received Christmas gifts, boxes of candy, key chains, cards and other little presents.
“They thank me for watching over their children when they’re not around,” he says. “That makes me feel good.
“I try to protect them like I protect my own children. While I’m out there, I’m responsible for them. That’s the way I feel. “
A father of five and grandfather of eight, Salutric says his love of children is a big part of why he stays with the job.
“I see the little kids go to kindergarten and see them grow over the years. It brings back memories.”
