{"id":2453031,"date":"2020-01-08T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-09T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=318878"},"modified":"2020-01-08T22:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T05:00:00","slug":"aspen-school-bus-driver-joy-brooks-retiring-after-30-safe-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-school-bus-driver-joy-brooks-retiring-after-30-safe-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen school bus driver Joy Brooks retiring after 30 safe years"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Joy Brooks smiles at fellow bus drivers as she prepares to leave for her afternoon rounds. After driving for Aspen School District for 30 years, Brooks is retiring Friday. She said she prayed she\u2019d finish the week without having any accidents, since she hadn\u2019t had any in her career.<\/strong>
Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cMiss Joy\u201d is retiring Friday after 30 years of making sure kids get safely transported between their homes and Aspen schools.<\/p>\n

Joy Brooks started driving for the district in July 1990 when her husband, former transportation director Fred Brooks, needed someone to drive a van for special needs students. She was so good at it that he urged her after a year or so to get her commercial drivers license so she could drive a standard-sized school bus. That launched a career of not only driving school buses but also snowplows to help clear the school campus\u2019 roads.<\/p>\n

\u201cI drove the big dump truck called Jaws,\u201d Brooks recalled recently. \u201cI loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n

For 23 years, Joy said she had the pleasure of driving the Castle Creek Road route. She would head up the spectacular valley early in the morning and catch scenes in dawn\u2019s early light, then see the landscape in a completely different light in late afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always said I had the best office with the best view,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was like the ocean \u2014 the view was always changing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Small snow slides swept down on the road a couple of times while Brooks was driving, but she heeded her husband\u2019s advice to keep the wheels moving to avoid getting stuck.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to call in and say I got stuck,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Occasional rockslides were a hazard. She also had to plow snow with the bus bumper on a few occasions when fast-striking blizzards came in.<\/p>\n

She has been fortunate enough to see deer, elk, turkey, foxes and what she believes was a wolf across the road from Toklat Lodge.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not saying this because she was my wife,\u201d Fred Brooks said. \u201cShe is the best bus driver with the kids, student management, who I\u2019ve ever seen. So many drivers just want to get in the bus and drive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the years, she\u2019s driven all of the school district\u2019s 17 bus routes. She took not only the safety but also the well-being of her charges very seriously. Fully loaded buses can have 70-plus kids, she said. She devised a system where high school students sit in the back, middle schoolers in the middle and elementary youngsters in front where she could keep better track of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a saying, \u2018When you put your kids on the bus, they\u2019re my babies,\u2019\u201d Brooks said.<\/p>\n

The responsibility for transporting the kids safely was stressful and \u201cthe hardest thing I\u2019ve ever done in my life,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

With that many kids over that many years, there were inevitably some behavioral problems that needed to be addressed. But Brooks feels good about developing great relationships with nearly all the students and many of the parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I show them courtesy and respect, I get it back,\u201d she said. She was fondly called \u201cMiss Joy\u201d by many of her students over the years. Brooks said it is always endearing to have some of the younger students tell her they love her.<\/p>\n

Parents of young children felt particularly relieved because they sensed Joy was looking out for them. That\u2019s the ultimate compliment, Brooks said, having the trust of parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to miss the kids and the crews that I worked with,\u201d Brooks said.<\/p>\n

She won\u2019t miss the drive. She makes two round trips from the midvalley to Aspen per day.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a split shift, which always made filling driving positions difficult, Fred Brooks said. There are a couple hours of work in the early mornings and a couple more hours in the afternoons, with a big layoff in between.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really burned out on the commute,\u201d Joy Brooks said. \u201cThere are a lot more cars, and people are in a hurry.\u201d<\/p>\n

The behavior of other drivers made the safety aspect more challenging.<\/p>\n

Impatient drivers ignore the flashing red lights and extended stop sign off the driver\u2019s side of the school bus. Brooks said she once had to grab a child by the hood to prevent the student from exiting when Brooks saw a car passing the stopped bus on the right.<\/p>\n

The worst excuses, when law enforcement officers were able to nab the violators, were, \u201cI couldn\u2019t see you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The buses are a 42-foot-long, 8-foot-wide, 12-foot-high yellow banana with red flashing lights, Brooks noted.<\/p>\n

Despite the challenges, she went 30 years without an accident.<\/p>\n

She was different because she wanted to interact with the kids, find out how they are doing and offer support.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery kids matters,\u201d Joy said.<\/p>\n

scondon@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joy Brooks smiles at fellow bus drivers as she prepares to leave for her afternoon rounds. After driving for Aspen School District for 30 years, Brooks is retiring Friday. She said she prayed she\u2019d finish the week without having any accidents, since she hadn\u2019t had any in her career.Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times \u201cMiss Joy\u201d is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2453031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 21:54:09","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2453031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2453031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2453031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2453031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}