After 50 years of transporting children to school, Jane Davis has retired from what she considers more than a job — it has been a ministry where she has mentored children for half a century.
“It has been a ministry,” said Davis, a member of Lakeview Baptist Church in Pembroke, Kentucky. “Many children are not taught anything about Jesus. I was saved when I was 9 1/2 and it is as real to me then as it is today.”
“I always strived to be a shining light to these children. I made many friends, and I still get hugs today,” she said.
‘Smile and be nice’
As a driver in the Christian County school system, she recalled her training that instructed drivers “to smile and be nice” to those riding her bus. “That’s because you’re going to make a memory.”
Her role involved more than just the transportation aspect. She was a teacher before the students ever entered a school building. She taught them to always say “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am.” And she emphasized the importance of speaking to her. “I’m not a robot … I am a person.”
A story on WKDZ Radio, written by William Battle, detailed how she started the bus driving adventure. She told Battle: “I didn’t want to go to work and leave my children in a daycare. So I went to the board office and asked about a secretary job. They said they didn’t have any openings, but they did have bus driver jobs. I said, ‘Well, that would be fine. I can drive a bus.’”
She added, “I’ve driven in all the schools there are in Christian County — every one of them,” she said. “I love kids, love kids, and they love me.”
She told WKDZ that “kids are still kids. They are what they are brought up to be at home.”
She became aware of the burdens of some children.
“You don’t know what these children live under,” she said. “They just need somebody to love them and be kind.”
‘Whatever the Lord opens up’
She remembers one little girl who hesitated at the bus door, tears in her eyes, asking a question Davis has never forgotten.
“She said, ‘Will you take me home with you?’”
“I said, ‘Sweetie, I can’t do that.’ And she said, ‘My mama and daddy fight with knives, and I get under the bed and cry myself to sleep.’”
Davis noted that children “just want to be praised. They want to be told they’ve done something good. Don’t holler and scream at a child — that’s what they hear at home.”
Her kindness to those on her bus is evidenced by one boy who was labeled to her as a problem.
“I told him, ‘You’ve got the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.’ He said nobody had ever told him that. The next morning he got on and said, ‘Thank you for that compliment.’ I never had a minute’s trouble out of him.”
She told Kentucky Today that she “hates to retire, but I think it is time. I may go back — I don’t know.”
She told WKDZ she will do “whatever the Lord opens up.” She won’t remember every name or every face. But she said she hopes the feeling she left behind — the warmth, the kindness, the sense that someone cared— is what lasts.
“I want to be remembered as a nice lady, and a kind lady, and a lady that always smiles,” she said. “It pays off. Believe me.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Chip Hutcheson and originally published by Kentucky Today.
