Bus Driver of the Year loves kids

“It’s addictive,” Rose Lymber said of her job driving children to and from school for the last 20 years. “And it’s the kids that make it so. We play pranks on each other and they make me laugh.”

When she was awarded the Brett Holm “Bus Driver of the Year” for Poudre School District in April, it came as a total surprise to her.

Alicia Durand, Wellington Middle School principal, enticed her into a room where she was awarded a plaque in front of the school district’s Channel 10 television, her supervisors and several students who ride her bus. She was also honored at the Classified Employee Awards Banquet in April.

“I wasn’t sure I could do it,” Lymber said when friends first encouraged her to apply for a job as bus driver. She passed the training course and for the first two years drove a route in Fort Collins. When a driver based in Waverly retired, she took his job and since then has been able to park her bus in Waverly and work a route that delivers kids to LaPorte, Waverly and Wellington schools.

She’s up and out at her bus by 5 a.m., checking that all systems are go before she begins her route at 5:35, retrieving students from the Rawhide area and delivering them to Waverly for transportation to Poudre High School. She finishes up her Wellington runs by about 9:30 a.m., heads home for a few hours. After walking her dogs and tending to her house, she’s on the road again for a three-hour afternoon stint. Some days she puts in additional hours driving for field trips.

“It’s a long day,” she said. Occasionally I run errands in town on my midday break, but not often. In the summer she enjoys working in her yard and maintaining her acre of property.