CHAOS STAYS AWAY FROM VINEDALE CAFETERIA FOR 31 YEARS : SCHOOL WORKER DRIES TEARS OVER SPILLED MILK.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

You watch Carol Fox get ready for lunch with 450 hungry elementary school kids, and your mind wanders to Purple Hearts, hazardous-duty pay and the Sisters of Mercy.

No person - no matter how gentle, kind and courageous - should be subjected to this kind of stress five days a week.

Think of it: 450 hungry little bodies marching on the school cafeteria in two shifts of 225 each. And you're the last line of defense.

You are the noon duty supervisor, the thin line between order and chaos.

Amazingly, Carol Fox has been on the front line of cafeteria duty at Vinedale Elementary School in Sun Valley for the last 31 years without a break in service or a breakdown in nerves.

Thirty-one years. They erect national monuments for less.

Today she's looking over the shoulders of kids who spill their milk and dump their peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches, half-eaten, into the trash, just as she saw their parents do.

She has seen five principals come and go, dozens of teachers retire, and literally thousands of kids move on with their lives.

And Carol Fox is still here, still living a few blocks from the elementary school that her two kids, now 36 and 39, used to attend.

She's still getting up every school day at 6:15 a.m. to be at school by 7 to prepare for the breakfast crowd. Now about 200 kids eat the first meal of the day at the school, not at home.

She's still putting on a smile no matter how she feels that morning. You've got to be cheerful for these kids, she says. You show up in a bad mood, and it's catching.

Now, you might think that after 31 years, this dedicated woman has her job down to a science - and you'd be right.

Her cafeteria is run like a well-oiled machine. It reminds me of an Army mess hall, without all the swearing.

The kids file in for breakfast and lunch and sit at their assigned tables - boys on one side of the cafeteria, girls on the other.

Integration of boys and girls may work fine in the classrooms, but it doesn't in the cafeteria. You want to feed these kids in half an hour, you'd better segregate the sexes.

Now don't get me wrong. She's not running Stalag 17. Carol Fox is no drill sergeant or Nurse Ratched. It takes softness, as well as toughness, to stay so long on the front lines of an elementary school cafeteria.

``You don't stay at a job like this for 31 years unless you love kids,'' Carol said Wednesday, as she got ready for the first onslaught of 225 students by filling up her spill bucket with fresh water.

With so clumsy, little hands reaching for milk and juice cartons all at once, you'd better have a big bucket of water to clean up the mess.

It's also important to know your lunch customers, she says.

``I know which ones might give me trouble, so I'm always watching them a little more carefully,'' Carol said, patrolling the cafeteria aisles, walking and talking.

That's how she spends breakfast and lunch - walking and talking to the kids, with her spill bucket near.

She stops to find out why a few of the girls are crying today, why a few of the boys are eating alone.

She knows kids can be cruel to each other. A good noon duty supervisor dries the tears and restores peace and harmony.

It's also the job of a good noon duty supervisor to teach some of these kids manners. She has seen a definite decline in deportment over the years, she says.

``I've learned to just stand there at the table and wait for them to say `Thank you' when I've done something for them,'' Carol said, grabbing her bucket and heading for a spill across the room.

``With some of these kids, though, I could stand there the whole lunch period, and they'd never get it. It's not their fault. They've just never been taught manners at home.''

Those kids are the minority, she says. Most of the kids who eat in her cafeteria have no trouble thanking Carol Fox or asking her for advice or a favor.

A few times every year, the inevitable will happen. She will be stopped on the street or in the store by a young mother who will say, ``Mrs. Fox, remember me? My daughter eats lunch in your cafeteria now, just like I used to.''

Carol Fox will smile and nod. Of course she remembers.

``People think I'm crazy when I tell them that I still love this job after 31 years and that I'll continue doing it for as long as I can,'' the noon duty supervisor said as she watched the second lunch shift of kids file out of the cafeteria.

Another lunch hour successfully concluded. The thin line between order and chaos never breached.

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PHOTO Vinedale Elementary School lunch monitor Carol Fox has run the show in the cafeteria for 31 years.

Hans Gutknecht/Daily News