It takes 34 steps to cross 10th Avenue from the corner of West 25th Street in Manhattan to the private school on the other side. Even more so if your kindergartener is wandering around with a sippy cup in hand. It takes just 16 steps to cross West 25th Street to Avenues the World School. He takes even fewer steps if he's a 12th grader who's desperately trying to get to first period.
Five days a week, in the bright early mornings of September and the creeping dusk of a February afternoon, railroad crossing guard Richard Henderson watches arrivals, clasps hands, bumps fists, shouts into traffic, and crashes. I picked up my homework.
“Hello, Wilder,” he would say to the four-year-old boy.
“Spider-Man,” he laughed as he watched a preschooler clutch his favorite superhero figure for dear life.
“Miss Seattle,” he addressed the third-year girl, a freshman from the West Coast who dutifully wore a Seahawks hat every day.
Henderson, known as Richie, was the son of an East New Yorker raised on assisted living by a single mother who died of cancer while Richie was still a teenager. He didn't have a high school diploma or even the equivalent of a college degree, but he had a good family and a job he loved as a railroad crossing guard at a private school for $65,850 a year.
At the end of each day, the 10th and 25th, these highly privileged children were, for a few seconds, entrusted to the care of a man of great warmth and responsibility. Ms. Henderson managed the Uber drop-offs for the children and made sure the boys could play soccer with the girls during recess.
Raina Gilchrist, a Spanish teacher at the school, said Henderson connected with her students in ways she couldn't, such as secret handshakes and attending games during recess. . He was pleasantly candid, fully responsible and completely trustworthy.
They adored each other, she said. “So, can you throw me the football?”
The Avenues family paid tribute to Henderson for his work, friendships, and perfect spiral, sometimes with a big vacation check, sometimes with just a cup of cocoa on a frigid day. He expressed his gratitude.
And in January, at ages 25 and 10, 10 years into his career, they stood by Henderson when he was gone and it was his family that needed to be protected.
The eyes and ears of 1,900 children
School crossing guards form an unprecedented army of men and women, parish by parish, school district by district, to keep New York safe and united. The city's public schools require security guards to speak English, pass a drug test and undergo one week of training at a police academy. The agency that provides contract railroad crossing guards to Avenues provides its own training.
But the most necessary talents for a railroad crossing guard can be difficult to measure: patience, ability to work in all weather conditions, a sense of humor, and a willingness to risk one's life to save a child when the time comes. be.
The city's foot soldiers are the Woodside grannies trying to make the most of their days, and the Fort Greene graduate students scrambling to pay their next tuition bill.
Or maybe a solid guy like Richie Henderson.
Richie, the third and youngest child of Lavina Joyce Henderson, lost his father to AIDS and his mother to cancer at the age of 44. Older Earl and Jermaine tried to care for Richie at Brooklyn's 75th Precinct. In the late 1980s, it took some effort.
The Eastern District of New York averaged about 100 murders a year, and local police officers were notorious for their roles in the precinct's drug dealing and violence. The second son, Jermaine, was shot five times in a hail of gunfire: once in the head, once in the shoulder and back, and once in each arm. It's a neighborhood beef and he never gets arrested.
“The bullet in my head is still there,” Germaine said.
Jermaine's survival was no small miracle, he said, and his mission from then on was clear.
“Protect your brother at all costs,” he said.
As it turns out, Richie didn't need that much protection. He became known as a talented neighborhood mediator. He quelled the fight. He encouraged laughter. He brokered a deal just to get things off.
“All he wanted was peace around him,” Germaine said.
Henderson's first job, perhaps unsurprisingly, was as a lifeguard. They weren't appealing.
“He was a security guard at a construction site,” his wife, Jakeba Dockery, said with a laugh. “Protect dirt”
Henderson met Dockery when he was a teenager. She went on a blind date with his friend and he went along. He ended up getting her phone number and the love of her life. They had three children of her own, two girls and one boy. Ritchie Jr. works as an exterminator for the city's public housing authority. Lavina, named after Richie's mother, is working toward her welder's license. Janaya East is a freshman guard on her New York Family Academy varsity basketball team, and she's already garnered interest from college recruiters. Mr. Henderson is now a grandfather to two girls.
He arrived at 25th and 10th Street on Manhattan's West Side in 2014 as a contract employee. He was given a neon-colored vest and was given the responsibility of keeping many of the 1,900 children who arrived each day. It was a school with high goals.
“We graduate students with peace of mind across borders,” pledges in its mission statement, declaring that they will become “architects of lives that transcend the everyday.”
Henderson was also an architect of life. His youngest children arrived calling his name. Graduates came back to see him. During recess, injured children were scooped up by his giant hands. He gives Spider-Man a Hot Wheels set, and he cries with relief when he discovers that the student he thought had dropped out of school was studying abroad.
“I've been waiting a long time,” he told the boy.
Elizabeth Littman, dean of students for the middle grades, said Mr. Henderson was especially alert at the time of his expulsion.
“A lot of kids walk out onto 25th Street or 10th Avenue and don't notice the cars and are just really excited to eat pizza, see their friends, and participate in after-school activities.” said Littman. “He was their eyes when they were really blind, or less focused on the dangers that might exist around them.”
Upon returning to the house he had purchased in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood, Henderson told Dockery that he had seen his parents and various stars on television. He was grateful to receive what Dockery called “decent money,” or her $2,200 every two weeks.
In the summer of 2023, the school honored Henderson's contributions by appointing him to the staff, something never done before for a crossing guard. He no longer intends to work as a subcontractor. He will be enrolled in a benefits package that includes medical insurance, a retirement plan, and life insurance.
“They gave him a rose,” Ms. Dockery said of Mr. Henderson's position on the staff.
She said that while her imposing husband, who was more than 6 feet tall and weighed more than 200 pounds, might be strict and demanding with his own children, he was never the same with Avenues' children. Told.
“Those kids, that school, got the best out of Richie,” she said with pride, saying she has no regrets.
strife, death, despair
On Sunday, January 14th, Henderson returned to his old neighborhood in East New York to watch an NFL playoff game with friends. The next day is Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, so I can put off any laundry that needs to be done until then. He promised Dockery that he would be back in plenty of time to make his famous mashed potatoes for dinner.
“You have a big belly,” she used to tease him. “Nothing's going to hurt that belly.”
Mr Henderson and one of his friends, Anthony Williams, were riding home on Platform 3 when an argument occurred in the car they were riding in. Mr Dockery said he was told that a man and his wife and child were playing loud music. Another rider objected. As the fight began, Henderson intervened.
Police can't confirm that. There were no cameras in the car, making it difficult to corroborate eyewitness accounts. They have no reason to believe that Henderson did anything other than try to help, but the details of what happened may never be known.
What is certain is that Richie Henderson was shot and died at the age of 45. Initial reports said Henderson had been shot multiple times. Dockery said her death certificate, which she received, states that her husband was shot in the abdomen, severing her large abdominal artery, and her husband's life will be saved. That's what she thought, she said.
That night, detectives took Dockery to Kings County Hospital Center. Mr. Henderson was already at the morgue.
“I couldn't touch my husband when he was warm,” she said.
Dockery's heartbreak turned into considerable anger. She said Henderson's chances of being saved were ruined because the subway system sped through multiple stops after he was shot. Later, a photo of her late husband was leaked online, and she took steps to sue the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, claiming that her photo was taken by an MTA employee and leaked.
No arrests have been made in Henderson's death. For Dockery, there's just a complete lack of understanding and acceptance. She said her killer took her heart and took her life. And the killer took the $2,200 every two weeks that kept her family afloat.
“We have a mortgage, we have bills,” she said. “We have children, we have grandchildren. My husband was a great provider. He never missed a day of work. I often begged him to stay home. “No, I have to pick up my baby and my students,” he said. “They're going to miss me. I have to go to town with the baby.”
Beatrice Prince, a senior at Avenues, has known Henderson since he was a sophomore. Henderson made sure to play with the boys during recess. She learned of his death on the news and was devastated.
Her older brother, Leo (15), a second-year student at the school, wanted to soften the impact. He had never created a GoFundMe site before, but he asked Beatrice to start one and spread the word. He learned that there were other parents who were doing similar things, so he decided to work with them.
“I knew I had to do something to give back,” he says. “I was expecting it to explode.”
The site quickly raised thousands of dollars. The next day, during class, Leo sneaks a peek and finds that a family has donated $10,000. Many more people reduced their donations. Each time he refreshed the page, he gasped.
The site ultimately raised $378,000 from 1,704 donations.
“That's crazy,” he said.
It was so crazy that I knocked Jakeba Dockery to the side.
“It’s overwhelming,” she said.
Students, parents and teachers wrote cards and testimonials to Ms. Henderson. Becca Howlett, the school's director of people and culture, delivered them to Dockery and read them at Henderson's funeral in Brooklyn. Mr. Howlett also paved the way for Mr. Dockery to obtain professional financial planning advice on what to do with the hundreds of thousands of dollars generated by the tragedy.
Dockery gave Howlett a necklace as a thank you. The locket contained some of her husband's ashes.
Mya Kahana was one of the students who wrote a tribute to Henderson for the school's monthly magazine.
She heard about the unique bond between Henderson and the students in Gilchrist's Spanish class. She heard about Spider-Man's parents and about Henderson's man, Wilder. She herself had known Henderson for 10 years.
“Richie was Richie,” she said. “He knew my name. He was someone who cared about me.”
The magazine published a photo of an impromptu memorial to Henderson on the sidewalk outside the school, complete with flowers and a cup of cold cocoa. The students also used chalk to write Mr. Henderson's name. One of them, an 8th grade girl named Sydney Homecheck, was worried about how long the sidewalk mural would last, so she wrote a poem that might last forever.
You'll never realize how crippled the chalk is in my palm,
Filling the streets with pigments,
The rain just washes away and disappears
Footsteps touch the color
Now, Mia reports that the local community board is calling for the stretch of 10th Avenue that Henderson patrolled to be named in his honor and have a street sign installed that cannot be washed away. I will do it.
Maia, the daughter of a doctor and medical consultant, appreciates the yawning gap between Henderson's upbringing and that of many of the children at her school.
But when I first met Henderson, a 7-year-old only child transplanted to New York from abroad, I couldn't tell any difference between them. He was wearing a Seahawks hat and said he was anxious and a little scared.
“Mr. Seattle,” he called her.
