CLIFTON – While some might dread the start of a new school year, 81-year-old Teddy Steinberger can’t wait.
In the final days of summer, he’s busy prepping his blue-collared shirt and neon orange vest and big red stop sign for another school year. For an enthusiastic and energetic Steinberger, the beginning of school year means seeing "his" students.
From September to June, he has the brave duty of making sure they cross the streets safely.
As a crossing guard at the busy intersection of Bloomfield Avenue and Shafto Street in Clifton, Steinberger daringly steps into the street to stop traffic for pedestrians and students from School 9 on Brighton Road. Although foot traffic has declined over the past few years, he said, because many parents prefer to drive their kids to school nowadays.
Steinberger, after 15 years at his corner, has become a familiar face in the community.
On the first day of school last week, drivers yelled, "Welcome back! Welcome back!" Steinberger said over the sounds of cars riding by and honking. Steinberger quickly raises his arm high and waves back.
"Like they tell me, "I’m a fixture on this corner. It’s not the same when you’re not here," he said.
It’s the people he meets, he said, that make the job so enjoyable. He points to houses across the street, reciting who recently had a baby, who just returned from college and who’s moved away. College students who Steinberger once helped cross the street return to chat and seniors often ask him to join them for tea and breakfast.
Before he became a crossing guard, Steinberger worked at H. Cross, a company that manufactures metals. At the warehouse in Weehawken, he rolled film for installing in light bulbs. After 25 years there, he was forced to retire. But for Steinberger, retiring meant just finding another way to stay active.
When he left H. Cross in December of 1992, he decided he wasn’t going to spend his free days sitting at home. The next month, he applied to the City to be a crossing guard. He was assigned to the post in front of the old Globe factory on Bloomfield Avenue and has remained there, year after year, ever since.
A man of many trades, Steinberger said he’s always managed to keep busy.
When he was just a teenager in high school in 1945, he joined the U.S. Navy. Until the end of the war in 1947, he worked at a shipyard in Hoboken owned by Bethlehem Steel Co., a company that produced many of the vessels that were used in combat during World War II. A few years later, Steinberger took a job as a floorman on the night shift at a company that made printing ink. He worked there 17 years before going to H. Cross.
"I always made sure I had another job," he said.
When Steinberger turned 80, his wife Joan thought he might finally retire completely. "I always said when he turned 80, he would pack it in. Then he turned 81," she said.
In between his daily shifts – one in the mornings from 8-9 a.m. and another 3-4 p.m. - Steinberger spends his time working around the house, often ridding his garden of weeds. In his time off, he and his wife take day trips down to South Jersey and the Monmouth Race Track. They will celebrate their 53rd anniversary next month. They also have three sons – Henry, Thomas and Dennis – in addition to seven grandsons.
Steinberger said he’s not sure what he’ll do after he leaves this job. There is one thing he is certain of though. "As long as I can work, I will work," he said.
