Those also serve who drive the bus*

Among the cemeteries my family visits each Memorial Day is one which holds the following gravestone:

A granite rectangular gravestone with a curved top bears the name “Lowe” and the image of a school bus.
Visible on the side of the school bus is “R. F. LOWE”**

In the small K-8 district in which I grew up, Mr. Lowe ran the school buses. By “ran” here, I mean he owned, operated, and drove the small fleet of buses that were contracted to the town district. And when he drove as a substitute, however you may have behaved on the bus usually, you behaved yourself. 

I was reflecting today, as I spent time in cemeteries surrounded by flags, about what services we honor: we set aside days for both living and dead military members. We have a day for presidents and for a slain civil rights leader; for a more than dubious explorer increasingly forced to share with those displaced and killed by what followed him; for the first battles of the Revolution (in Massachusetts and Maine) and for thanksgiving. 

On social media, you will find weeks for teachers and nurses; a month for librarians; days for custodians, for bus drivers, for administrative professionals, for principals. We don't set them aside as holidays; we also don't associate them with the country in the way we do with the military.

If, though, we hold, as our and so many other state constitutions hold, that public education is foundational to the preservation of the country ("necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties" as the Massachusetts document argues in Chapter V, Section II), then they also serve who drive the school bus. 

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*John Milton, Sonnet 19:

When I consider how my light is spent, 

   Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, 

   And that one Talent which is death to hide 

   Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent 

To serve therewith my Maker, and present 

   My true account, lest he returning chide; 

   “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” 

   I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent 

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need 

   Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best 

   Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state 

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed 

   And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest: 

   They also serve who only stand and wait.”

 **while it would not have surprised me at all to find that Mr. Lowe's family had remembered him this way, as it happens, I believe he's still living--there is no date of death on the stone--and thus it would not surprise me at all to learn that he (now in his 80s!) chose this himself. If by chance, Mr. Lowe, you're reading this, please know this Houghton Elementary graduate remembers you fondly!