By By LYDIA GRIMES – Features writer
You've seen her. She has been standing on the corner of Douglas Avenue and Underwood Street for several years. She waves her arms, kicks up her legs and blows her whistle, all in order to get the attention of those who are driving vehicles. Cheryl Jones is the school crossing guard for that particular corner and traffic gets pretty busy around 7:45 a.m. and 3 p.m. every school day.
Jones has been the crossing guard at various locations around town since 1978 when she got a call from Police Chief Glen Holt.
She has worked at the crossing at Liles Boulevard and Sowell Road, but her current spot is where she has been the longest. The children who walk to the intersection have become her friends.
She stands there, as her fellow crossing guards do, whistling, pointing and waving her arms and legs. It's quite entertaining to those who are watching, but she never forgets that her main purpose for being there is to make sure the children are safe on their way to and from school.
She says working at her post doesn't take too much time each day, but Jones is committed to those times just as if it were a full-time job. She hardly ever misses a day when she is supposed to be at work.
Jones was born and raised in Chicago. Her parents had been residents of Brewton who moved to Chicago in 1945. She and her sister attended schools in Chicago and she graduated from Englewood High School in 1971. The school would seem large to anyone, but to residents of Brewton, it was huge. It had an attendance of thousands.
Jones was very active in clubs and organizations while in school.
She got a job after graduation with Zenith Radio Corporation. She worked for five years at Zenith ordering parts for the company products. They paid to send her to school to study business.
Her parents retired from working in the U.S. Postal Service and decided to return to Brewton in 1976. She had made trips to Brewton many times to visit over the years and, with some persuasion, she made the trip with them. They opened a club called &#8220The Outer Limits” and Jones worked for them.
At the time her father was having some work done on the club and he called upon Horace Jones to help. It wasn't long before Horace and Cheryl fell in love and were married. Hollis Jones, their daughter, was born in 1979.
They lived in a trailer on Pea Ridge Road and went to work on building a house nearby. It took them three years to get the house finished, and they did all of the work. They were determined not to move into the house until it was completely finished.
She went to work with Lucille Harvey in an Upward Bound program and then in a daycare program. She later worked at The Carriage House and with the Community Action Agency. With several of the jobs she had, Jones was still able to continue working as the crossing guard, but when she began to work at Community Action, she didn't have the time to do both. Never the less, she has always found her way back to what she enjoys the most.
The Joneses are members of Second Saint Siloam Missionary Baptist Church.