A laminated newspaper clipping from 2002 hangs in Coweta County school bus driver Martha Ivy’s office, at the school system’s transportation office on Cofield Road.
The story’s photo shows Ivy, then a 28-year bus driver, and her granddaughter Sarah Grace Ivy, then a kindergartner. Ivy drove the bus to Northside Elementary School, where her granddaughter had just started school. She drove her three children and other grandchildren as well.
Sarah Grace graduated from Newnan High School last spring and Ivy is retiring this December, after 41 years as a Coweta County School System bus driver. While she is looking forward to retirement, “I just can’t imagine not driving a bus,” she said. “I do love my job.”
Coweta County school bus drivers operate over 200 vehicles each day, transporting 15,000 students over 400-plus routes each day.
Monday, Oct. 17 is School Bus Driver Appreciation Day, set aside to recognize bus drivers, said Transportation Director Judy Gresham.
“They do a wonderful job, sometimes under very difficult circumstances” getting so many students to and from school each day through Coweta traffic, Gresham said.
Gresham describes Ivy as “caring, and very dependable,” and said that she will be missed on the road and in the transportation office, where she helps manage the maps for the school system’s 400-plus bus routes.
Drivers like Ivy “are important to our schools and our families,” said Gresham, who hopes Coweta County students, parents and teachers will find a way to let bus drivers know how much they are appreciated.
Ivy began driving a bus in 1975.
“I did it for the insurance,” she said.
Ivy was on the job just two weeks when she found out she was expecting her third child. She kept driving her route until the Friday before her daughter was born, and returned to work shortly after. She has driven the route for the old Madras Elementary School, Northside and Arnco-Sargent elementaries, Central and Newnan High Schools, and Evans Middle, as well as countless football games and band competitions.
“I love driving a bus,” said Ivy. “I said I would keep driving as long as my children were in school, and then I drove all my grandchildren. I’ve enjoyed it all.”
