Prior to the fall of 1972, if you asked Minnesota resident Connie Duff what she wanted her career to look like, her answer certainly would have had nothing to do with school buses. Then, she worked for Griswold Manufacturing. It’s thanks to a friend who had a mutual love of horses who suggested she consider driving a school bus.

Duff had never even ridden a school bus, hence some initial hesitation. In those days, training and testing were nothing like they are now. The most important interview question at that time was if she could drive stick shift (thankfully, she could). So, Duff went out in the country with a driver to see if she could operate a yellow bus. She could, and she started the very next day.

Now, more than 53 years later, she’s celebrated in Princeton for her contributions to safe student transportation for generations of local children.

But she has no intent on resting on her laurels. Duff’s sights are set on the next goal: Making it longer than the record-holder for longest school bus driver (currently set by Carl Fisher with 64 years under his belt).

Duff drives a special-needs route for Palmer Bus, where Princeton Public School students rely on her steady hand behind the wheel every day. For her entire bus-driving career, she’s been there, working for all five companies that have been contracted to run for the district.

All these years later, we sat down with her to find out what sticks out the most from her half-a-century of time behind the wheel. Here’s what she said.

Hear Connie’s stories firsthand in this video interview!

Q: What makes you keep driving a school bus after 53 years?

Duff: The more I did it, the more I liked it. I enjoyed being around the kids and the camaraderie with the other drivers.

I showed horses, so the schedule worked great for me because I had off between bus routes to do my riding and training, and I had weekends off to go to my shows and summers off. So it was a perfect day for me.

I've done it for so many years, it's part of my life. It's my priority. I like the company I work for, and I love this facility.

I've worked for five different bus companies in Princeton. We had Odegaard Motors, Peterson Bus, Laidlaw, Minnesota Central, and then Palmer.

(At first) we got paid once a month. The buses were owned by one of the car dealers in town. My first take-home paycheck was a whopping $220 for a whole month. Gas was 30 cents a gallon in those days

What are some of the biggest challenges you've encountered over the years?

(At first) I wasn't prepared for all those kids. And of course, a new driver, they're gonna try you out right away. I had no training for how to handle these kids. None at all, it was just learn as you go.

Right now, I drive exclusively special-needs students. I have a monitor that helps with them, and they wear seat belts. I don't really have any issues with the students. But traffic? The traffic in Princeton from what it was 50 years ago to now is just unbelievable. Princeton was a pretty small town, I think we had 12 buses.

Since there was no training when you started, how have you progressed in your knowledge of the job?

After I had driven for a few years, we had a driver that became our trainer, and that was Jan Rosen. She drove for 45 years before she retired, and she was the first woman bus driver ever in Princeton. So she taught me 90% of what I know about driving.

She would go out with you on your route and give you a critique at the end of how you could do better. It was all constructive. How you could handle kids, situations better. She was there to monitor and see how you were doing as a driver. And I just have the greatest respect for her.

When she retired, I thought, I'm gonna try to beat that record. Now, I wanna tell you that the Guinness World Record for the longest driving school bus is 66 years. So I thought, well, there's something to go for.

We had no training to handle students on the bus. And in those days, the driver handled the discipline. So if you wanted to, you could throw a kid off the bus. That was really different in those days. They knew that if they didn't behave, so they were pretty good. Nowadays, the school is so much better at taking part in the discipline and helping kids to learn correct behavior, which I think is more important than punishing them for bad behavior.

What are some of the most memorable moments on the bus, any emergencies you had to navigate or funny stories?

I had a student one time who was reaching down under the seat for something. There was a piece of metal under there, and he cut his head open, and he was bleeding. We couldn't stop the bleeding, so we had to call the ambulance. That was a little scary.

But that's what you have to do if it's an injury; they have to get medical help more than what the driver can do.

Here’s a funny story: One day, I'm driving my route and the kids are all looking at the ceiling and laughing, and I'm thinking, ‘what is going on?’ Because in my mirror, I can't see the ceiling. So I pulled over to find out what's going on, and here somebody had taped a Kotex to the ceiling of the bus.

(Another time) there's two middle school boys sitting together a couple of seats back, I can hear them talking, and they're looking at something in their lap. I said, ‘what are you guys doing?’ And they said, ‘we're just looking at something.’ Well, then one says, ‘doesn't that look like the teacher?’ And they're laughing. And so I thought, I better find out what's going on. So I pulled the bus over, go back there, and here they have a Playboy magazine. I took it away from him and I said, ‘I don't think you should have this on the bus.’ And he says, ‘you better give that back to me. I got that sold for five bucks in school.’

I took it in and gave it to my boss. I handed it to him over his desk, and he says, ‘I'll take care of that.’ And he puts it in his drawer.

There have been some scary things, too. On my first bus route, I was taught to never move the bus if you don't know where the child is. I had a little boy and his sister, and they got off the bus, and she crossed the road, and then somebody distracted me. I looked and I didn't see him, and I thought ‘I'm not moving this bus until I know where he's at.’ So I put the parking brake on, got out. He had crawled underneath the bus. He had dropped something, and it had rolled under the bus.

That sticks with you forever.

What do you want others to know about school bus drivers?

I think that they think you just get in there and you drive, and that's it. There's nothing else involved. And there's so much more. You have to be able to do first aid. You have to be able to drive the bus safely. You have to watch out for traffic. We’re driving at two of the worst times a day. It's very mentally straining. When people are going to work in the morning, they're not thinking about what they're doing, and then they're coming home at night, same thing. And they're just not watching for buses.

Most drivers don't think of this as just a job. It's a vocation.

I don't think that drivers get respect. People think that school bus driving is a low-level job. Really, you have to go through a lot of training.

People say, ‘how can you get tired? You just sit there and drive.’ It's so much more than that. I drive two tiers. You go out in the morning, I leave at 6, I have to drive and pick up my monitor. I pick up my first child at 6:35 and drive until you have to come back. You might have to fuel the bus, you might have to clean the bus. Assume you might get done by 9, so that's three hours in the morning and then you've got another three hours at night. So you've been in that bus seat six hours a day watching out for crazy people driving and keeping the kids safe. I think a lot of people don't understand how really demanding the job is and how much training you have to go through. It's not as easy as you think. You have to be alert all the time.

But the more you do it, the better it gets.

What kind of appreciation means the most to you? How can transportation directors or site managers make you feel special for the work you do?

Telling you that when you do something that's above and beyond. That you're appreciated. Palmer Bus is excellent at doing that.

What advice would you give to a new school bus driver?

Don't get in a hurry. If the roads are bad, it's better to be safe than to be in a hurry. And that's hard because as a bus driver, you wanna be here at this time, and you're here at that time, you're at this stop sign at that time. So you have to do things right with the kids.

Right away, explain the rules so that they know the consequences if they don't follow the bus rules. Kids know when they have a new driver, and they're gonna try to see what they can get by with. They gotta test the limits.

Now with special needs, I don't have that issue; you have a different set of problems. You have kids that don't understand because they don't have the comprehension that other kids might. So you have to keep repeating things to them and explain things to them very clearly. You have to sit down. You can't put your legs in the aisle. You can't have your backpack in the aisle.

So you just have to take more time with them. They're not doing things because they're trying to get you; they don't understand.

Any other parting thoughts you want to leave us with?

I just want to say that it's been great working for Palmer Bus. They’re a wonderful company, and they really treat their drivers right. We have monthly training we have to go through. In fact, tomorrow we have a session here for special needs drivers and monitors only.

I think to a lot of people I've said, ‘you should go try driving.’ (They say) ‘I could never do that. I could never handle all those kids.’  People have the idea that you are driving 60 crazy kids, but it isn't that way anymore. You have help from your company, you have help from the school, and I just think it's so different than it was 50 years ago.

My closing thoughts is we need more bus drivers!