By David Harry
Staff Writer

It is not just movie critics who give two thumbs up.
Scarborough school bus driver Wendy Chaff routinely gives two thumbs up to let her riders know it is safe to cross both sides of the roads along her route. That vigilance and the affection and care she shows for her riders have helped make her the 2009 Scarborough Leader Great Person of the Year.
Readers voted for Chaff after her nomination by Scarborough resident Kendra Haskell.
“Wendy is an amazingly conscientious bus driver,” Haskell said in her nomination letter. She detailed how Chaff saved Haskell’s daughter, Olivia, from stepping in front of a driver who did not see the flashing red lights of Chaff’s bus as it stopped on Black Point Road. The incident occurred last spring, Haskell said, and her daughter was uninjured.
Chaff, who has been driving students for five years, said she is firm about safety, but she learned her methods from other drivers.
“The kids only cross on my permission,” Chaff said, “but every driver I work with should be recognized as a Great Person.”
In a day that begins with picking up middle and high school students before 7 a.m. along Black Point Road, Chaff said she drives students of all ages to school, on field trips and to athletic events.
By 9 a.m., Chaff said she has finished driving students to Pleasant Hill Elementary School, and then she reverses the process as she begins taking students home at 1:30 p.m. and wraps up a normal day by 3:45 p.m.
“You need to be a good driver, you need to like kids, and you have to be able to tune some things out,” Chaff said of driving between 30 and more than 70 students to schools. “There are a lot of them and they are not going to be silent.”
Sarah Redmond, director of transportation for Scarborough schools, said Chaff also leads classroom instruction on bus safety at the schools.
“She is not in a hurry, safety is a big thing with her and she goes out of her way to help the kids,” Redmond said.
As he waited for the bus Monday morning, kindergartner Caleb Thurston said Chaff makes the bus ride fun by providing toys he can play with as he rides to Pleasant Hill Elementary School.
“I like to play with the toy insects, sometimes I stick them on the window,” he said.
Deb Tewhey, a teacher at Wentworth Intermediate School where Chaff also delivers students, said having a bus driver with a cheerful attitude makes a big difference for arriving and departing students.
“It is the last face they see before they come into school,” Tewhey said.
Chaff, who said she became a bus driver because the work schedule fits in well with raising her two daughters and a son, has definite ideas about her job duties.
“The bus is supposed to be social, and it is supposed to be safe,” Chaff said.
The incident leading to the nomination from Kendra Haskell occurred last spring. Chaff said about once a week she sees an approaching driver go through the red signal and not see the stop sign extending from the driver’s side of the bus.
About once a year, she said, a driver will decide not to wait in line behind a stopped bus and pull around. Bicyclists frequently ride through the stop signal as well, Chaff said

Initial training to drive a school bus took 10 to 12 hours, Chaff said. Drivers also are required by the state to have a commercial driving license with a special endorsement to drive buses.
The hardest things to learn were backing up and parallel parking, Chaff said. Her first days on the route proved to be trial by weather as it snowed each day but not hard enough to cancel school.
On her first days on the route, remembering to turn on the signals before opening the bus doors was a challenge, but she has never been reticent to ask for help from other drivers and the students.
The help includes asking some children to stand in certain areas at bus stops so she can see them better. Redmond said Chaff is very good about knowing her route and when children are not there.
For the younger children, stops are often in front of houses on her route, which extends from the area near St. Maximilian Kolbe Church toward Spurwink Road, with side streets tucked in between.
The number of riders varies in the stages of her routes, Chaff said. Perhaps 30 riders go to Wentworth Intermediate School while 60 may be headed to Scarborough middle and high schools. A full load is 78 students.

Chaff said her driving skills may be genetic – her grandparents operated a taxi service in Boston.
“My mother told me my grampy is looking down and saying ‘good for you,’” Chaff said.
Caleb Thurston said Chaff made his first days on the bus easy last September. Chaff said she carries stickers new students can give to their parents when they return home and often pairs a new student with a second-grader to make the first rides more comfortable. Quite often, she said, a child worried about the first day of school settles down quickly after parents are out of sight.
Chaff, who enjoys skiing, crossword puzzles and needlework when not driving, also keeps books and balls of yarn on the bus for students. Making cat’s cradles keeps children quite occupied, she said.
Chaff said winning the award came as a surprise to her, if not her children, and the honor reflects the help she has received from other bus drivers.
“I just love it, it is such a great fit,” she said of driving.

Staff writer David Harry can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 219