Page 132 - some-stuff-i-wrote-and-some-stuff-i-didn't-(2011)-h-morris-williams

Some Stuff I Wrote (2001) H. Morris Williams

Well Done, Frankie

May 3,1994

School bus driver Alice F. “Frankie” Williams is retiring at the end of this school year. For
30 years she has been one of the best. In her long career, she safely transported thousands of

students for hundreds of thousands of miles in all kinds of weather, often on a 40-mile daily route
to and from school. With all that, she has never been charged with an accident.

To reward Frankie’s meritorious service, her fellow drivers have named her “Bus Driver of
6C
the Year,” and our school system has named her the Non instructional Employee of the Year.”
Frankie deserves every award she gets and more but honors are not new to her. She had
driven under four different superintendents and four different transportation directors. They all

judged her “outstanding” in her work.
She faced a variety of unusual challenges in her 30-year tenure. She once removed a large,

live rattlesnake from her bus. She has nursed baby kittens bom to a cat that a kid had smuggled onto
her bus. She once kept and mothered a small child who was afraid to go home because bad things
were happening there. When little kids were too scared to get off the bus on stormy days due to loud

thunder and lightening, she took them home with her and then personally drove them to their
doorstep in her own car when the storm stopped.

Frankie has driven a variety of different school buses since back in 1964 and she describes
them as “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” Just how bad was the worst one? Well, she once drove

a bus that had problems with the windshield wipers, the mirrors, the carburetor, the brakes, the
cooling system, and the battery cable — all in the same day! Yet, she solved all those problems on

her own and got her students transported to school and back home again safely.
Completely apart from her driving skills, Frankie is one of the most popular, most beloved
drivers in the school transportation department - a devoted friend to all employees, from the newest

driver to the director, Tom Alford.
So here’s a 24-carat salute to the one-and-only Frankie Williams. Well done, Frankie. On

behalf of those thousands of kids you transported safely — and their parents — thank you! Enjoy your
retirement!

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