Glenn Shillinger
I was hired in January of 1973, the year before the merger, to be a school bus driver for College Preparatory School. The school had a great faculty, great staff, great students, but you could tell it was struggling financially. I thought, “This is going to be a temporary job for me.” Then 45 years later, I was still there.
My whole thing was, when somebody gets on that bus in the morning, you greet them with a smile and a hello, and you make the start of their day the best part. The families were always so nice. I still remember one of the parents, Sally Monroe, bringing me out a piece of toast and a hot chocolate most mornings.
The Middle Schoolers and Upper Schoolers were groggy and sleepy at the beginning of the day. In the afternoons, you could get a little bit more out of them. It was the little guys who were the ones who liked to talk. When I drove, I made it fun. I was pretty good at doing voices, so I’d get on the microphone and be chirping at them. The Shuttle wasn’t established until about 1980, and it was the best part of my job, sharing with the students that 15 minute ride each way between Doherty and the Hillsdale Campus — sitting behind that big wheel with the mirror where you can look back and see all the kids. I loved it. The Shuttle is a part of me.
I probably had five different ways to get between Doherty and the Hillsdale Campus. A lot would be determined by the weather. If the weather was bad, I’d go right down Madison Road. If it wasn’t bad, maybe I’d go down Wold Avenue and hop on I-71. The Madison Road route was my favorite. I could do that with my eyes closed — though I promise I never did!
I began driving players to away basketball games, and Duke Snyder and I started talking and getting to know each other more. A few years later, he asked me if I would coach golf. I said sure and did that for 13 years. Then he asked me a few years later to run the clock for basketball games, which Mrs. Brestel trained me to do. I was very into sports and loved helping out, so I’d be the starter for some of the track meets, an umpire for baseball games, whatever was needed. Duke was doing so much, and I had a whole lot of respect for him, so I wanted to mimic that as much as I could and put everything I had into the school.
When Duke stopped coaching basketball, he started keeping the scorebook at games, so we were there at the scorer’s table together for at least 20, if not 25 years. We also ran together every morning or afternoon for about 10 years and went to lunch pretty much every day. We were good sounding boards for each other.
One of the best things about the school is how we rallied around people when they needed it. When Middle School physical education teacher Beth Leonard got sick, she hated not being at the school, but the school really took care of her. Another person was Dave Sharpe — whom we all called Sharpie. The school ended up helping take care of his funeral expenses. It shows what a loving, caring place this is. Anyone who was in any sort of a situation — faculty or staff or a student — we’d do whatever we needed to do to make it right.
I still live five minutes from the school, and I miss the day to day. I miss driving the Shuttle, walking the hallways, greeting the teachers and kids. Every month or two, I’ll help out with a field trip, so maybe I never fully retired.
