ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 30, 1996 TAG: 9605300038
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Beth Macy
SOURCE: BETH MACY
Evelyn Campbell is a creature of habit: Same house and same husband for 42 years, same job for 30.
``I don't like changes,'' the 62-year-old says.
You'll find her at the same corner of 26th and Avenham every morning and every afternoon, wearing exactly the same uniform: black shoes, black pants, white shirt and blaze-orange vest - a whistle curled tightly around her right index finger.
In 1966, Roanoke police hired its first crossing guards to help kids cross high-traffic intersections near schools. Campbell, the only one of the initial seven guards still working, will hang up her whistle in two weeks.
She's stood umbrella-less through downpours, nearly been mowed down by careless drivers in a rush to get to work. She's sweated through 100-degree heat waves and slipped on myriad patches of ice.
In her 30 years on the job - 28 of them stationed at Main Street and Windsor Avenue, near Wasena Elementary - she's made some interesting observations from her little corner of the world:
n``Women drive faster than men. They're in a hurry to get to work. They have more things to take care of.''
nWhereas she walked one mile to Mount Pleasant Elementary when she was a girl, most kids today take the bus or ride with their parents.
nStudent attire has changed a lot in three decades - girls wearing pants, kids wearing shorts, boys wearing ponytails and everyone hauling backpacks. Campbell herself was glad to stop wearing the crossing guard's requisite dark-blue skirt several years ago. ``Pants are much more comfortable,'' she says.
Asked how she feels about retirement, her emotions were mixed. Her husband wants her to quit: ``He worries about me being out here - especially when it's cold - and I don't know why, 'cause it's worse when it's hot.''
But Campbell's not sure she's ready for the change in routine.
When her boss asked her to stay another two years, her husband intervened: ``I said, you don't even know this, but she's had breast cancer, she's a diabetic and she has heart trouble, and she's getting to the age where it's time to hang it up,'' Ralph Campbell recalls.
Six years ago, Evelyn Campbell went through tumor surgery and radiation treatments - and didn't miss a single day of work. ``She didn't even tell her boss,'' her husband says. ``When I have a pain, I let the world know. But she won't tell nobody nothing.''
|n n| And you thought newspaper columnists were bad ...
A Blacksburg reader sent me a reprint of the ``Worst Analogies Ever Written in a High School Essay,'' gleaned from a recent Washington Post contest. Some of my faves:
n``The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.''
n``Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.''
n``Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.''
n``Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.''
n``He was as tall as a 6-foot-3-inch tree.''
n``Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like `Second Tall Man.'''
n"The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
n``His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.''
n``The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.''
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS Staff 1. Nathan Hall, 8, pausesby CNBon his way to school to visit with crossing guard Evelyn Campbell.
2. Campbell stops traffic so a family can cross Avenham.
3. Evelyn Campbell has made a career of protecting schoolchildren
at 26th Street and Avenham Avenue Southwest in Roanoke. 4.
(headshot) color.