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attended the quinquennial event in 1980 and 1985 as a Maryland state delegate and returned in 1990, 1995 and 2000 as an NAPT board representative. After moving to the private sector, he repre- sented his employers on three more occasions. To put that feat in perspective, Donn has been to every NCST minus the first eight events, which include the 1939 inaugural meeting called by Frank Cyr that established among other things the color school bus yellow. A former track star for the University of Maryland, Ed Donn married wife Sandy at the end of his junior year in college. Start- ing a family, he left the team, for which he competed in the 400 meters and 800 meters, and the newlyweds went to work full-time while also finishing school. Ed joined the National Park Service as a ranger naturalist in the Washington, D.C. area. He served as a museum docent and guide for what he called “barge trips, walks and talks” at local preserves. Donn said he still thinks about what his life might have been like


had he remained with the Natural Park Service, but destiny had other designs. And literally millions of students and parents have benefited as a result. He soon put his undergraduate degree in biol- ogy and athletic experience to good use by accepting a position as a science teacher and track coach for nearby Prince George’s County Public Schools. He taught there for three years, but soon the grow- ing district published a position for a transportation director to help get students to more than a half-dozen new campuses being built across the growing D.C. suburb. Te principal and administration at Donn’s school nominated him for the job. “I don’t know why they did, but they did,” he recalled. Despite having no previous student transportation experience,


Donn accepted the position. Te full-year salary of an adminis- trator certainly beat only 10 months of pay as a teacher, especially with a young, growing family to feed at home. Over eight years passed, as did a federal court order for


desegregation busing, and Donn said he found himself in need of a change. Now armed with a master’s degree in education, he took a job as a high school principal for Prince George’s County. Tree years later, Washington County Public Schools in Donn’s hometown of Hagerstown, Maryland tapped him to replacing the district’s retiring director of transportation. He spent the next 17 years there overseeing operations, retiring in 1991. Donn was ready for another challenge but didn’t want to leave the industry. His daughter and a new grandchild lived in Georgia, and both Ed’s mother and Sandy’s lived in Florida. Carroll Pitts, Jr., another industry legend and NAPT Hall of Famer, approached Ed to see if he was interested in an open director position at Whitfield County Schools. Te district hired him, and the Donns relocated to Dalton, Georgia. Donn retired in 2001, but not before Scott and Oram took notice of their future business partner, who had been part of a focus group in Georgia formed to help develop advanced camera systems for school buses. “Back in those days we had VCRs on buses, which was a single camera, or the old camcorders that were little old cameras in a box. Te VCR tapes were breaking, as in bad weather they got brittle,” Donn recalled. “We thought there had to be something better.” He worked with ParentNet, which at the time provided parents with the ability to use the Internet to monitor their children at


See Us At Booth #623 22 School Transportation News • MARCH 2018


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