FROM HAULING COWS TO KIDS
Bev Fecker retiring after 25 years as Colby District bus driver
Students at the Colby School District were not greeted by bus driver Bev Fecker for the first time in 25 years this school year. Bev retired in June after driving bus routes for Burnett Transit since 1997 and said the first day of school this year was a bittersweet moment.
“It was hard the first day. I sat outside on my deck, I saw my bus go through and I felt the tears come to my eyes,” Bev said.
Long before retirement and the longing to hop back in a bus, Bev was a single mother with four kids.
After growing up in the Chetek area in Northwest Wisconsin, she moved to central Wisconsin in 1963 and worked at Weyerhauser in Marshfield for a time. She would parent during the day and work at night. Because money was tight, Bev reached out to coworkers who might be working the night shift at Weyerhauser to see if she could carpool to work in Marshfield.
That’s when she met Gary, a Vietnam War veteran, who gave Bev rides to work for a time until they eventually dated and were married in 1972.
Bev said, “When Gary asked me to marry him I said, ‘You’re not just marrying me, there’s four of my babies that are in that house and if you can’t accept that, then this won’t work.’” Gary was up to the challenge as he took over as the father figure of the family and he and Bev added two more kids of their own.
The couple bought a cattle buying and transportation franchise and moved to a farm seven miles east of Colby. Bev said the business was her first experience driving big vehicles on a consistent basis.
She spent the next 25 years making trips all over the state transporting cattle in a straight truck with her husband and two boys. The Feckers had three trucks going different ways at anyone time.
Bev said she spent a majority of her 16-hour day on the road delivering cattle to Milwaukee, Green Bay from Barron, Altoona, Stratford and a number of other places.
“At one time, we had over 400 farmers we picked up for,” Bev said. “With three trucks going, we could do that but as times have changed, anybody that can pick up a trailer, could transport their own cattle. So we lost about 300 customers.”
Bev and Gary also milked a 25-head cattle herd before leaving to drive. She said there were days she got out of bed at 2 a.m. and didn’t get to bed until midnight the next night. In the 1990s, the laws on how long you could drive were stiffened and farmers began hauling their own cattle. For this reason, Bev and Gary decided to sell the business and move into the City of Colby in 1997. After years and years of working 16 hours per day, she was unsure what she was going to do for work.
“I thought to myself, I’ve worked 16 to 20 hours per day for the last 25 years and now, I’m out of a job.”
While driving down Highway 13, she drove past the Burnett Transit building just outside of Spencer and thought she might be able to use her skills driving bigger vehicles, and apply it to bus driving.
“I should just go in there and see if they’re hiring,” Bev said. “There were no signs up or anything. I talked to Joe [Burnett] and introduced myself and he asked what I had for a license. I said, ‘I’ve got a CDL with air brakes.’ And that was it. I was hired.”
She went up to Abbotsford and took a written CDL test, hopped in a bus with Joe and drove bus that school year.
She laughed and said, “I took my test and was driving a short time later and I thought to myself, ‘What did I just do?’” The transition from hauling cattle to an auction or barn to hauling kids to school was one that didn’t take Bev long to adjust to.
“The adjustment wasn’t too bad but when I hauled cattle, I was my own boss but when I started working for Joe, I had to look up to somebody else who was much younger than me. Driving a truck vs. driving a bus, you don’t have the same rules. But the transition from hauling cows to kids was not an issue.”
Bev said her strategy when disciplining kids who were standing while the bus was moving or jumping from seat to seat was simple. If the kids were mis- behaving, Bev found a safe stretch of road and pulled the bus over and not move it until the kids learned that they wouldn’t be getting home until they behaved. She said she wouldn’t have to say a word because the kids knew, or quickly found out, that if someone wasn’t behaving in the right manner, the bus wouldn’t be moving.
She said rules on how bus drivers could discipline kids changed but she never had to because her method allowed the kids to police themselves and by dictating when they would be getting home that particular evening.
During her time with Burnett Transit, Bev helped coach newer drivers on what was acceptable when driving the bus.
“There were basic rules and then there were Joe’s rules. He’s a bit stricter than most. We have to check our busses, the tires, the lights and fuel up. That was natural to me because I did that with a cattle truck.
“If someone would have told me I’d be driving this long, I would have told me they were crazy,” Fecker said.
She said there were times where she thought she could retire but she loves kids and it was hard to stop driving and give up time she could be spending with kids.
“I’ve got six children, 12 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren so I love kids and I couldn’t just step down and leave them.”
When looking for a time to step down, Bev decided that when her next driver’s license renewal date came around, that it would be time for her to be done driving bus. She said giving up her CDL was one of the harder things she experienced while heading for retirement.
“I told the DMV worker that I’m giving up my CDL. I’ll be 81 next week and I think it’s time.”
In her 25 years as a bus driver, Bev never had an accident but that thought of “What if ?” always stuck with her as she contemplated retirement.
“I thought if I had an accident, it’s not just me [that could get in trouble], it’ll be Joe because they’re going to look at him and say, ‘What is that 80-year-old woman doing driving a bus?’” Her time with her coworkers before and after bus routes is another thing she misses about the job.
“I got along with everyone. In her free time Bev hopes to see her kids, grand kids and great-grand kids more often. She has a son who lives in Arizona and has already been out to see him once this summer but she said she would like to make more trips to visit him.
She also looks forward to hosting Christmas, Thanksgiving and other celebrations with her grand kids and great-grand kids and said trading work in for more time with family was something that she was certainly looking forward to.
“I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
TIME FOR CAKE -Bev Fecker’s retirement from Burnett Bus Service after 25 years as a Colby School District school bus driver was recognized with a colorful birthday cake.
