HSE driver has transported special needs student every day for twelve years
By Ann Craig-Cinnamon
We can probably all agree that it takes a patient person to be a good school bus driver. To be a school bus driver of disabled and special education students though, it takes a special person. Meet John Miller. He has been a bus driver for Hamilton Southeastern Schools for 14 years and for the last 12 of those years has driven disabled and special needs students.
Miller met Lizzie Ford, who has cerebral palsy, when she started first grade in 2002 and has driven her to and from school nearly every day ever since. This spring, Lizzie graduated from Hamilton Southeastern High School.
“John Miller is just a wonderful person. He has been so helpful and caring. He makes a difference,” says Lizzie’s mother, Kara Ford who tears up as she watches her daughter pose for pictures with the man who has taken such good care of her for so many years.
Lizzie, too, appreciates the friendship.
“He’s meant a lot. He’s like a third grandpa to me. He’s just a wise person who is not biologically my family so he can kind of take a step back and look at the situation from the outside and just tell me objectively what I need to do. That’s like true advice,” she says and adds “he’s definitely been an important friend to me. When I met him my parents had just separated and I was going through a lot. So it was good to have that one stable person because things were changing for me.”
Miller says, for his part, he chose to stay with Lizzie.
“Every year I would get Lizzie back and I would tell my transportation director, ‘no, I’m gonna stay with Lizzie. I don’t want to switch routes. I want to stay with Lizzie.’ It was my choice,” he says. “When Lizzie got to the seventh grade she said ‘Mr. Miller promise me you’ll stay with me until I graduate.’ And I said I’m thinking about retiring and she said ‘no, you can’t retire right now. You’ve got to wait until I graduate and then you retire.’ And I said okay I promise, I’ll stay with you until you graduate.”
And so he has. And he’s enjoyed it too.
“I love working with Lizzie, I love being with Lizzie. I gave her three different names. I call her my sweet Lizzie, I call her my peach, I call her Miss Lizzie. And I tell her when she would get on the bus “who loves you?” and she says ‘Mr. Miller’ and I say ‘don’t you forget that.’”
It’s never been about a paycheck for Miller.
“When I started driving school buses for Hamilton Southeastern, I didn’t go there to drive the school bus for money. I went there to have impact on kids’ lives and to show love and show them how to respect one another,” he says.
There are 285 bus drivers in HSE according to Jim White, the Director of Transportation for HSE Schools. Of that number only thirty drive disabled and special needs students.
“It takes a particular type of person that wants to work with special needs of any sort; that takes the time and has the discipline to make sure that they care for those students and make sure they are moved safely from home to school and school back to home,” he says. “The thing about special needs is that you become so attached to them that they become like their own children and they treat them as such.”
White says that Miller has done an excellent job with Lizzie.
“He has had a lot of kids over the years and he has taken an interest in all of them. They like John. The kids know that he takes his job seriously and that when he says something he means it. But he’s all about the safety of the kids. He’s taken Lizzie under his wing,” says White.
Lizzie graduated in the top ten percent of her class with a 4.2 grade point average. She received several scholarships, including Ball State’s Presidential Scholarship and plans to be a neuropsychologist. She says she wants to help other people like herself with cerebral palsy and spina bifida and specialize in physical disabilities.
Miller says he knows she will do well.
“I’m gonna miss her. She’s gonna do well. I told her I’m just a phone call away if you need to talk,” he says. As for his own plans, Miller says he’s not ready to retire quite yet. There are other children to take care of.
About John Miller:
67 years old
Bus driver for HSE Schools for 14 years
Prior to HSE was charter bus driver
Father of 5, grandfather of 16
About Lizzie Ford:
19 years old
Graduated from HSE High School with a 4.2 grade point average
Will attend Ball State University to study Neuro-psychology
Received Presidential Scholarship
