As I mentioned in my August 28 blog post, I was a member of the safety patrols at Pleasantdale Elementary School during the 1969-1970 school year and went on their annual trip. We went by train to Washington, D. C. and then on to New York City. It was a lot of fun, not only visiting those cities which I had never been to, but spending so much time with school friends away from the usual school setting.

When Marissa Howard, Programs and Membership Coordinator at DeKalb History Center, sent this photograph to me, I thought perhaps it was a group of school safety patrol students. The group of students in the front have a sign that reads Morgan Falls, a former school in Sandy Springs I have written about before. The photograph is part of the Guy Hayes Collection in the DeKalb History Center archives.

I wondered if the groups of children may have been preparing to leave on the annual safety patrol trip by train to Washington, D. C. and in some years New York City also. I participated in the safety patrol at DeKalb County’s Pleasantdale Elementary School back in 1969 and 1970 but didn’t know the origins of the program or when it started. I also did not recall that it was associated with AAA, the American Automobile Association.

If you look closely, you will also see the name of two other Fulton County Schools at that time-Center Hill and Lakewood Heights Schools of Atlanta.  Several of the students are wearing badges and a few have on their safety patrol sash with the badge attached. There are quite a few suitcases.

In Vivian Price Saffold’s 1983 book, “A History of the Community and the City of Chamblee,” which celebrated 75 years of the city, there is a 1904 photo of children at Wylie School. The school was located near what is now Embry Hills. The children’s ages are described as from six years old to “as old as the teacher would keep them.”