Valley View Bus Driver's Art Delights Students, Staff

• Submitted by Valley View School District 365U
  

Photo: VVSD bus driver John Bradbury checks out the foam board designs that fill the roof of his bus.

Bus number 209 in Valley View School District 365U’s fleet looks like your ordinary every day school bus from the outside. But one step inside the vehicle and you realize it is anything but ordinary thanks to a roof filled with artistic creations courtesy of driver John Bradbury.

“I call them foam board designs,” said Bradbury, who says he has created drawings since he was a little boy. “I would always draw and draw as a kid, not just draw but create and build stuff. My dad always said I should go to art school but my mom said there was no money in it.”

Instead, when the Brookfield resident graduated from high school he went to work as a printer at Wallace Press in Hillside where he had access to large sheets of poster board. That’s where he refined his artistic abilities that now fill the roof of his bus (fastened by magnets) and sit in the VVSD Transportation Center and the VVSD Early Childhood Center.

“If I see a picture, I’ll draw it by hand, then I’ll sketch it with pencil or marker,” he said. “I cut it out with an Exacto knife and then glue it to the foam board with a hot glue gun.”

Bradbury launched his career as a bus driver more than a decade ago driving routes near Midway Airport for First Student. He found his way to VVSD quite by accident.

“My brother lived in Lakewood Falls and we were driving down the street when he said ‘hey there’s a bus company down here by my house,’” Bradbury recalls. “I turned down Normantown and saw the buses so I pulled in and talked to a guy named Ray Holloway who told me to apply.”

That was eight years ago.

Bradbury has driven several different buses during his career with Valley View and has decorated the roof of all of them. This year he drives a special needs bus, serving students who go to Romeoville High School, Jane Addams Middle School and Valley View Early Childhood Center.

“Kids walk onto the bus and run into each other because they’re looking at the ceiling and not paying attention,” he said. “But it’s good therapy for some of these kids because if they’re having a bad day, they get on the bus and see it all and we strike up a conversation and they forget about their problems.”

“John does an amazing job for us,” said VVSD Director of Transportation Dave Richards. “He is well respected because he talks with the kids in a way that makes them feel comfortable.”

“I love this job,” Bradbury said. “I love these kids.”