Ma𓃲ggie Poston is finally ready to retire — at age 90.
Since 1꧅978, the widowed mother-of-two has been a ꧂crossing guard at PS 282 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, at 6th Avenue and Lincoln Place —- which locals often refer to as “Miss Maggie’s corner.”
“She’s always on her post, never sitting,” Poston’s supervisor, School Crossing Coordinator Ida Ripo-Ramos, told 🌳The P▨ost.
Poston was 44 when she first started the job. Jimmy Carter was president, Ed Koch was mayor, the Bee Gees were at the top of the charts and “Grease” had෴ just hit theaters.
She had been workin🐼g a retail job at Montgomery Ward, but the department💫 store closed the location she was at.
A friend told her abo🔜ut the open crossing guard position, and she jumped at the chance.💦
“I was looking for a job,” she recalled. “I love kids.”
Every morning at 9:30 a.mꦓ. and then again at noon, the petite fixture is stationed at her corner.
On a spring day, 𓆉🌃a woman pushed a stroller past Poston, then turned back to declare, “She’s awesome!”
The crossing guard acknowledged the complime🃏nt humbly, saying with 🙈a smile “Everybody knows me.”
In the winter, she generally stands on the school’s side of the street. In t🏅he summer, she crosses over to enjoy the shade of the trees on the other side.
Poston doesn’t mind snow much, but on “rainy days, it is terrible,” she said.
In over 45 years on the job, she’s hardly ever taken a day off.
“She’s got, like, I don’t even know, maybe 1,000 hours 🐻sick leave piled up. She don’t take it,” said Ripo-Ramos, who’s known her for 18 years. “She amazes me.”
In betw🌠een shifts, she walks nearly a mile back to her rent controlled fourth-floor walkup in Prospect Heights, where she bides the time in various ways but never naps in between shift — lest she be late getting back to work.
On the weekends, she goes to chu🧜⛎rch and spends time with her two children and her many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
In more than four decades guarding the s𓃲ame intersection, she’s noticed little change.
“It’s niꦬce, quiet. Everybody minds their own business,” she said.
She conceded that there’s “more traffic now,” but said everyone still “obeys” her.
“I have no problem,” she said of the growing number of cars and drivers. “I tell them stop, they stop. I tell them go, they go.”
When Poston turned 90 in January, colleagues were surp🐈rised.
“I thought she was 83,” said Ripo-Ramos.
Later this month, at the end of the school year, she’ll hang up her yellow-reflector vest. In retirement, she’s hoping to see more of the world and take a trip to Jamaica
“I’ve been working all my life. All my life,” she said. “It’s time to travel.”
