THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 21, 1995 TAG: 9506200065
SECTION: ISLE OF WIGHT CITIZEN PAGE: 05 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA McNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ISLE OF WIGHT LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
In her 30-year career, Odell Turner calls her finest hour a high school graduation.
It wasn't her own graduation or that of either of her four daughters. The time she recalls was the graduation of her first special-education student.
``The year the first kid on my bus graduated from Smithfield High School was one of the happiest days of my life,'' she said. ``Her parents asked me to come. I pushed her wheelchair. We took pictures right along with her family. I felt like she was one of my own children.''
And, in a way, she was one of Turner's own. She was a student on the special-education bus Turner drove all over Isle of Wight County during the last several years of her bus-driving career.
``Bus 26 and my special-ed babies,'' Turner said. ``There is nothing like them.''
Turner feels she was hand-picked to drive that bus, and she probably was.
One school official, Bob Driscoll, described Turner as very special herself.
``To be a school bus driver, you have to have selective hearing, selective vision, and you have to have the patience of Job,'' Driscoll said. ``Odell had all the qualifications and more.''
And she has a very good memory.
Turner still recalls the first day she went to see about driving a school bus. She remembers where she saw the ad, who the school superintendent was, the principal's name and the name of the mechanic who helped her to get acquainted with the technical aspects of driving the big yellow bus.
``I had just had my last baby. I told my husband I thought I wanted something to do, but I didn't want to leave my children for eight hours a day.''
As Turner's four daughters started school, they each got on the bus every morning with their mother.
``My girls started out with me in the morning and came home with me in the afternoon. It made life worth living.''
And they looked forward to the bag of potato chips she'd take them for an after-school snack.
``After my girls were grown, they told me they never liked having me as a bus driver when they were growing up because they never could get away with anything. Then they said later they realized they were probably better off not getting away with things they shouldn't do.''
The other kids got away with a few things. Turner remembers that once a shoe was thrown at the back of her head. She watched a bus aide get her dress ripped. One youngster couldn't leave the bus without pounding her on the back. It was his way of saying so long.
``Oh, Lord, by the time you get one side of the bus quieted down, a war has started on the other side,'' Turner said, rolling her eyes. ``The kids always called me Miss Odell or Miss T, and they knew Miss Odell didn't play.''
Turner thought about other careers. She took a cosmotology course and graduated. She did hair on weekends so she could still drive the bus.
She worked in a hospital one summer - and did such a good job that she was offered a full-time position at a salary much higher than she was making driving a bus.
``I couldn't leave my children,'' she said.
Turner drove for 30 years without an accident or a single traffic ticket.
``And I went anywhere they told me to go. I drove on athletic trips, band trips, field trips. The Lord was with me.''
Turner, now 59, retired in May on disability after she had surgery several months ago. She wouldn't have left the job then, she said, if her doctor hadn't insisted.
``I enjoyed it so much. I enjoyed the children, every one of them.''
She still hears from many of them and their parents. And she still keeps up with that one graduate who meant so much.
``She sent me a birthday card just this year,'' Turner said, smiling. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MICHAEL KESTNER
Odell Turner recently retired from her 30-year career as a bus
driver.
by CNB