Here, we share photos submitted to us by pupil transporters throughout the country that were featured in the Snapshots department of our August, September and November issues.
Snapshots — Summer/Fall 2013
Edward Eiting, supervisor of safety and recruiting at Hampton (Va.) City Schools, submitted this photo of a newly restored 1935 International school bus. Eiting says the bus was restored by Rohrer Bus Sales in Duncannon, Pa., and it was donated to the Museum of Bus Transportation in Hershey, Pa.
Here, 50 Montgomery County Public Schools buses are lined nose-to-tail for over a quarter of a mile at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds in Rockville, Md. For four days, these buses transported all of the safety patrols from public and private schools in the county to their annual picnic. The photo was submitted by Michael Lewis, bus operator and webmaster for the district.
The transportation team at Roosevelt School District No. 66 in Phoenix has entered this converted school bus — which they’ve dubbed the Polar Express — in two local parades each year for the past four years and has taken home top honors. “It has been a great effort for the drivers and assistants of the transportation department to bring this bus to life to entertain children as it makes its way to different schools in the Roosevelt School District for Christmas,” Dispatcher Donna Davis says. The bus has been painted black and features reindeer, a smoke stack and front grill, a caboose in the back and between 4,000 and 5,000 lights.
Kevin Neafie (right) poses with Albert "Buddy" Luce Jr. and Blue Bird No. 1 — the company's first steel-bodied school bus — at the Luce farm in 2004. A few years later, Luce, son of Blue Bird founder Albert Luce, donated the landmark bus to The Henry Ford, a group of historical sites in Dearborn, Mich. Neafie is director of transportation at Tippecanoe School Corp. in Lafayette, Ind.
In the Netherlands, people love to use yellow buses for their wedding transportation, according to Martyn Besselsen of Heino-based ElboBus Trailways, who submitted this photo. It was taken by Stephan Jansen. The photo is staged, but Besselsen says ElboBus Trailways does own the school bus. “We were planning to use these buses for low-budget ‘basic bus’ transportation, but instead it became a niche market for special events like weddings and promotional tours,” he explains. “We use them like the vintage trolley buses in the U.S. At the moment, we have six school buses.”
Mitch Moore, a bus technician at Hoover (Ala.) City Schools, spotted this rather large frog while servicing a bus and snapped a few photos of it. “I guess I was entertaining this fellow,” Moore says.