NEWS RELEASE

For immediate release

July 29, 2010

Contact:  Kristy Duritsch, kristy.duritsch@safetycouncilohio.org, 513-423-9758

OPEN HOUSE AND PEDAL CAR AUCTION TO MARK OFFICER DAVIS FINAL SAFETY TOWN GRADUATION

Middletown Police Officer Mike Davis, 26 year leader of the Middletown pre-school Safety Town training program and much loved School Resource Officer, will retire during the next few months.  August 6 will mark the end of a long career of teaching five year old children the safe way to get to and from school. 

An open house to honor Officer Davis will be held following his final Safety Town graduation at Amanda Elementary School, 1300 Oxford-State Road, in Middletown on August 6 at 3:30 pm.

FormerSafety Townstudents as well as the general public are invited to attend.

As a part of the celebration of a long career of keeping children safe in Middletown, an auction will be held by Auctioneer Roger Brandenburg to sell 14 of the original Safety Town pedal cars used by small children from 1977 to 1992 to learn the meaning of stop signs, sharing the road and how to avoid accidents in the tiny town. The cars were carefully maintained through the years and are all in good operating condition. Proceeds from the sale will go toward the Safety Town program run by the Middletown Safety Council. Absentee bids will be taken as well as on-site bids.

Davisbegan his work with the Middletown Police Department as a Police Cadet in 1966 and was once an undercover narcotics officer.  He now ends a 44 year police career.

The Jack Combs Memorial Safety Town was started by Harvey Poff in 1977 in response to several accidents involving children going to and from school. The program was led by Poff until 1984. Davis has been a School Resource Officer during the school year and Safety Town officer during the summer for the 26 years since.  He began going into every elementary school with his bus safety program following two child fatalities in 1989.  Most Safety Town graduates will remember his rhyming reminder “Seat on seat, back on back, feet on floor, hands in lap.” And the rule for crossing in front of a bus “10 giant steps.”

Davissaid of his unique job, “Little kids are cool. They are just like us but little. They want to learn and are just waiting for the next word you say. Even the ones who appear uninterested are getting it.”

Officer Davis was recently given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Ohio  School Resource Officers Association.

For more information or to bid, call Kristy Duritsch, Safety Council of SW Ohio Executive Director, at 513-423-9758.

Auction information is available at auctionzip.com

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