A Tribute to Our Bus Driver
In the course of a child’s school day, there are countless adults beyond “the teacher” who will affect a student’s day. The classified personnel, which for Bear Valley Unified School District and other districts, are those outside of teaching who also do their share of teaching, influencing, and making a difference. Be it the secretaries at the school’s front office when Mom is late, the classroom aide who gives them one-on-one time during math, the cafeteria employees who make their lunch, the noon duty aides who settle their playground disputes, the custodian in the halls (and shoveling the snow), the health aide who tends to tummy trouble, or the librarian who steers them to a life-changing book.
One particular member of BVUSD’s classified personnel made quite an impact on countless kids, in particular those who rode the Moonridge loop on Bus 8 in the 1970s. Bus 8’s beloved bus driver, Mr. Rex Gooch, was equally fond of the students he transported to North Shore Elementary, Big Bear Middle School and Big Bear High School, in both sunshine and snow. In fact, Gooch was so fond of those kids that, when he passed in May 2007 at age 72, even his obituary read that he was best known for his many years behind the wheel of “old bus 8” of the Moonridge route that looped the golf course. His wife Carol Gooch, who worked in our schools’ cafeterias for 25 years, tells BigBearNews that her husband Rex only worked for the school district for maybe six to eight years, graduating from bus driver to bus driver trainer, before taking a job at the Lake. Of his bus driving days, Mrs. Gooch recalls, “He’d come home, and I’d tell him he ought to write a book. He had some stories!” Among his favorites, she tells BigBearNews, is the one about the Dragonblood in a tube. The boys would squirt the “blood” on the girls, and he’d try to get them to clean it off the bus—but his wife suspects that he indeed did the cleaning, after all the kids were safely dropped at their bus stops.
Though Mr. Gooch only spent a portion of his career driving a bus, those mornings where he pulled up to the bus stop in Bus 8 were important to many a student. To wit, some former Bus 8 kids still remember our beloved Mr. Gooch, who greeted us every morning and took us home every afternoon, 30some years ago!
Susie (Sandstrom) Lerma: “I remember that Mr. Gooch was nice and that he always wore a cap, a red knit beanie.”
Tiffany (Davis) Burton: “I remember when I was in kindergarten, I got chased home by a dog and was scared to walk home from the bus stop anymore. Mr. Gooch made a special stop behind our house just to drop me off because I was scared. Also, he was the brave bus driver…we were at the bus stop when three goats were chasing us around, so we all took refuge on top of a fence–when the bus came, Mr. Gooch fought off the goats because they got on the bus as soon as the door opened. He managed to get the goats off and us on safely.”
Aimee (Gentile) Chlebik: “I was 8 or 9 years old, at my first bus stop in front of Triangle Market waiting for the bus. All of a sudden a big dog (I think it was a Golden Retriever) started humping my leg at the bus stop, but since I was so young I had know idea what he was doing–all I knew is I could not get him off of me! All of a sudden, the bus pulled up and Rex Gooch saved me! I had to get on the bus and all of the high schoolers were laughing at me. It was a very embarrassing moment! (Bus 8 rules!)”
Anna Chilcoat: “There used to be a boxing ring at the house where our bus stop was (and still is) at Sand Canyon, and I remember that one afternoon Mr. Gooch got out and jumped in the ring with us, the Todds, the Hamilton kids, Saderups, Riffenburghs, and the Chilcoats–that was our neighborhood.
And there was the time a girl kicked me out of my seat, and Mr. Gooch came back and lectured her, and then he put me in the seat right next to him.”
Cathee Sandstrom: “As a kindergartner, I was so scared walking down my long dirt road all by myself (save for all the dogs), to reach my bus stop. Mr. Gooch was always so kind to me, and would save me a seat up front beside him. The special bonus was that he would let me hold ‘the clicker’ so I could count how many kids got on the bus as we made our way through Moonridge.”
Josh Piestrup: “I remember Rex like yesterday… In first grade, an easy ride home on Number 8 took a traumatic turn for the worse when the 80 pieces of Tupperware my mom had ordered from elementary school breached the twice-my-size plastic bag provided. Always quick to pick on the first grader, the kids started kicking the pieces every which way. I panicked and missed my stop. Resigned to hide in back of the bus all night so as not to make a scene, Rex spotted me after the final stop. Confused, Rex stopped the bus, came back, calmed me down, helped me gather up the merchandise, and rolled that bus number 8 back around, right down Cedar (now Switzerland), over the dirt road bumps and everything, for the first-ever delivery right to my front door. I’ll never forget confused looks on Sandstrom faces as the bus rolled by…”
Shauna (Ray) Ratapu: “I do remember one particular bus trip quite vividly. School closed early due to a sudden blizzard and, by the time we got to Moonridge, it was really bad. I remember driving up toward Goldmine was the scariest part. The bus was fishtailing all over the place and the bus driver–must’ve been Rex–kept yelling out to the kids to be very quiet and to sit down. I thought he must be as scared as I was with all those kids on board…there was no way he could just drop us off and let us walk across the golf course in such weather. When we finally reached Goldmine, we sat there for quite a while. My stop was further down and it was getting dark. When we headed down the other side, the bus swished and swerved all over the road and I was truly thankful to be let off safely at my stop (walking home was another story). It’s too bad I wasn’t mature enough to realize what a feat of skill that was to manage those roads in those conditions…so, I’ll say it now anyway: Thanks Rex! You rule!”
This story was first published as a feature on BigBearNews.com in July 2007.