Grandpa Drives a School Bus!

Recent statistics indicate that nearly eighty percent of public school children either take the bus to school or are driven each day. This financial drain on school districts across the country can mean school boards often attempt to cut corners wherever they can — by hiring substandard drivers, for instance, or skimping on maintenance of the vehicles themselves. This is why both parents and children often shudder at the thought of riding back and forth in one of those iconic orange vehicles. Sometimes the only thing to do is keep your fingers crossed . . . 

And it becomes quite a hardship in most working families to drive the children to school each day and then pick them up afterwards. So what’s a person to do?

Well, if you’re one particular grandfather out in Gladstone, Oregon, who has ten grandchildren enrolled in school all in the same area, you go ahead and buy a used but sturdy orange school bus yourself just before Christmas, and then tell all ten happy grandkids and their incredulous parents that you personally will be picking them up and dropping them off each school day from now on.

That, at least, is what 67-year-old Doug Hayes has done this year. And although there is no official Grandfather of the Year award, we think Mr. Hayes decidedly would be the recipient this year. His grandkids sure think so!