STAPLETON — Longtime Stapleton school safety agent Sandra P. Cranford will be honored by the city with the intersection near the school she worked at for 28 years being renamed after her.
Tompkins Avenue and Hill Street will be officially co-named the "Sandra P. Cranford Way" on Saturday, in memory of the West Brighton native who worked for the former P.S. 14, Councilwoman Debi Rose announced.
"Mrs. Cranford was a friend and mentor to me," Rose said in a statement. "She was a kind, quiet, no-nonsense person known for getting things done. She exemplified good citizenship and compassion to young people, parents and teachers."
Cranford was born in West Brighton in 1935, graduated from Port Richmond High School, and lived in Stapleton with her husband, Rose said.
She worked for 10 years at the Federal Reserve Bank in Manhattan, but was involved in the PTA at P.S. 14 and eventually became a school safety agent at the school, where she worked until her death in 2002, Rose said.
"Everyone who came through the doors of P.S. 14 knew ‘Mrs. Cranford,’ and she greeted everyone with a smile and took a personal interest in the school's students," Rose said in a statement.
"Many students considered her to be a second mother. She cared deeply about the children, teachers and administrators under her charge."
Aside from her work at P.S. 14, Cranford served as a historian for the Staten Island-North Shore Section of the National Council of Negro Women and sang in the choir at St. Philip’s Baptist Church in Port Richmond, Rose said.
