Greensboro's African American Community Newspaper since 1967
Thomas Faucette will retire at age 102 from his second “gig” as a school crossing guard at Peck Elementary School. Photo by Ivan Saul Cutler/Carolina Peacemaker.[/caption]This week 102-year-old Thomas Faucette will end more than three decades as the iconic crossing guard at Peck Elementary School in Greensboro. A retirement celebration is scheduled for June 7 on his last day of assuring the safety of all pedestrians at the busy intersection of Van Wert Street and West Florida Street. The World War II U.S. Army veteran is a happy, familiar fixture, always greeting and waving to everyone walking to school or in vehicles passing by or as he says, “Zooming through the intersection on West Florida Street.”
Walkers to school began dwindling since the pandemic. For the past several years, Faucette’s attentive wife, retired teacher Elizabeth brings him to his morning and afternoon shifts.
A Greensboro native, in the 1980s, he retired from the U.S. Postal Service and took up a second career as a crossing guard for Greensboro City Schools in 1986.
Faucette says it was his wife’s idea. She was a teacher at Peck, which meant they could spend time together.
