He was just a nine-year-old boy, a fourth grader at Our Lady of Peace School on Merrick Road in Lynbrook. It was noon as he walked down Peninsula Boulevard, heading home for lunch on this damp and dreary April day.  The boy lived on Irwin Court, a short street just behind Flinch and Bruns Funeral Home and a very short walk from the busy intersection of Peninsula Boulevard and Hempstead Avenue where the boy would cross to get home. 

On this day, as always, the boy was met by the school crossing guard that helped protect the children crossing that busy intersection.  The crossing guard greeted the small boy with a smile, took his hand, and began to cross him.  They first crossed Hempstead Avenue to the northeast side of the intersection.  Then when the light changed again, and still holding his hand, she took him across Peninsula Boulevard, going southbound. 

This day, however would be different from all those other days of walking to and from school. It would be a day that the boy would forget for all these years, until recently. That boy was Joe Calderone, and on this day, April 30, 1963, he witnessed one of Lynbrook’s most tragic accidents. An accident that took the life of that school crossing guard who held his hand just seconds before. 

Three Lynbrook volunteer firefighters would also die along with Mrs. Roy at that intersection just moments after the young boy was crossed.

Joe Calderone has never talked about what happened that day.  He is now a grown man with his own child.  He believes that until recently he blocked the tragedy out of his mind.  What happened that day now bothers him, and recently he began thinking about the crossing guard who died that April day?  The memories all came back when he recently saw two crossing guards at an eatery in Franklin Square and he began to think about Mrs. Roy, and her own family, and had some sleepless nights.

Curious about that accident so many years ago, Joe went to the Lynbrook Fire Department website to see what was written about the accident and found the story that this writer wrote.  Joe said he was “shocked how accurate the fire department story was.”  

Even though it has been nearly 45 years since that deadly crash, what happened that day is still a vivid memory to him.  He knows he was the last person to be with Mrs. Roy before she was killed.

Joe recently sat down with this writer and Art Mattson, the Village Historian, to tell his story. A story he said needed to be told about Mrs. Roy and that is why he came forward. 

He recalled that while he walked down Peninsula Blvd toward his home that day he heard the fire horns blowing.  “They were loud,” he said.  The horns at the time were on top of the old Municipal Building on Merrick Road, just opposite the block where he lived.  He also remembered vividly the big smile and greeting he got from Mrs. Roy that day when he approached her and she came over to help him cross the intersection.  It was the same smile and friendliness that she always gave him and the other O.L.P. children that she crossed daily.  He especially remembered how she always took his hand, usually his right hand, and carefully escorted him across the two intersections for him to get home. 

On that April day, Mrs. Roy began to take him across Peninsula Boulevard as the sound of sirens could be heard from further down Hempstead Avenue from the direction of Merrick Road, or the “village” as commonly referred to for those of us raised here.  Joe sensed as he was being crossed that something had caught Mrs. Roy’s attention and he looked up at her and then looked in the same direction.  There was a fire engine in the distance approaching with its sirens wailing. Just then Mrs. Roy turned her head and suddenly looked up Peninsula Boulevard towards Merrick Road.  There were more sirens coming from that direction.  She saw another fire engine approaching from that direction. 

Mrs. Roy had a “look of fear on her face as if something bad was going to happen,” Joe said.  He then looked in the same direction and saw the fire engine rushing down Peninsula Boulevard towards them and the intersection.  He remembered there was no traffic on Peninsula Boulevard at that time except for three or four cars waiting in the turn lane to make a left from Peninsula Boulevard onto Hempstead Avenue.  

With fire engines coming from both directions to where they were, Mrs. Roy began walking faster across the intersection, practically pulling Joe along. Just before the two of them got to the curb by Flinch and Bruns Funeral Home, Mrs. Roy let go of Joe’s hand and shoved him towards the curb as the fire sirens got louder and louder and the engines got closer and closer to them.  “As she shoved me to the curb, her only words to me were, “Hurry, Hurry!” he said.   

As Joe stepped on the curb, out of the corner of his eye he saw the fire engine coming down Hempstead Avenue toward the intersection.  He turned and looked for Mrs. Roy who was no longer with him.  She was gone.  She had turned around and quickly went back out into the intersection.  He remembered seeing her put her left hand high in the air in the direction of Hempstead Avenue traffic and that approaching fire engine.  At the same time she raised her right hand and held it toward the traffic in the turn lane on Peninsula Boulevard and the other approaching fire engine. 

As the sirens grew louder Joe stepped into the village municipal parking lot next to the funeral home.  He said he continued to look at Mrs. Roy with her arms raised as he walked slowly toward home.  He however “sensed something was very wrong,” but said, “I didn’t know what I was thinking. I was so frightened and the noise was so loud, then I heard the crash.”          

On that April day, 45 years ago, those two Lynbrook fire engines collided in that intersection with a loud crashing of metal that was heard blocks away. Joe doesn’t remember actually seeing the engines collide.  He only remembers the sound of it.  He then ran as fast as he could to his house where he was met by his mother at the door. 

He told her, “She just crossed me across the street.” 

Joe’s mother went out the door to see what she had heard so loud inside her house.  Joe stayed in the house for only a minute before deciding to go back to see what happened to Mrs. Roy. As he ran down his block a neighbor yelled out to him, “Joey, don’t go there!” 

Back at the intersection, Joe looked all around for Mrs. Roy but she was nowhere to be found.  He doesn’t remember seeing the firefighters that were thrown to the ground after the collision.  He doesn’t remember seeing the police, an ambulance, or bystanders, at the scene.  Joe only recalls seeing the smashed rear of one of the fire engines.  He also does not recall anyone stopping him from looking at the scene either.   He wonders today, “Did I see everything, and did I just block everything out all these years?”

Newspaper accounts about that tragic day reported that the fire engines were responding, shortly after noon, for a house fire on Earle Avenue, which is one block past Joe’s street.  The newspapers stated that Mrs. Roy apparently sensed what was about to happen and entered the intersection to try and stop them.      

The impact of the crash threw firefighters to the pavement around the intersection.  Nine firefighters were injured.  One firefighter died that day and two others died the following days.  Mrs. Roy was struck and thrown onto the lawn of the Penbrook Apartments on the northeast corner of the intersection.  She died instantly.

The local newspapers wrote that the crash was attributed to “the treacherous surface of Peninsula Boulevard.”  It reported that the “road surface was slippery with oil and water. The papers also said that neither of the fire trucks was reported to have been speeding at the time of the accident.      

While the memory of the three firefighters killed in the line of duty that day are remembered on the Firefighters Memorial on Sunrise Highway, a stone memorial was also placed on the lawn of the Penbrook Apartments at Peninsula and Hempstead. That is the spot where Mrs. Roy died in the line of duty doing her job for our community.

Joe Calderone doesn’t know why he came forward now or why he has never talked about Mrs. Roy, or the accident.   But he now wants everyone to know, even if it is 45 years ago, that he believes she is a hero. 

“She got me to safety and then went into the trouble that she saw coming.  Firefighters run toward the danger, and Mrs. Roy did the same thing that day.  I was the last person she touched.  I take nothing from the three firefighters that died because I didn’t know them. I knew Mrs. Roy. She was my guardian angel. I will always remember what she did that day,” he said.