And the Bus Driver Listened
Sherry Moreno, the subject of this article, is not your average bus driver. This piece examines the fascinating life of a woman who has many stories to tell.
Five minutes ahead of schedule, the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s well meaning clock tower bells a few bars of the school’s alma mater and declares it to be 4 p.m. Across the March-green quad, at the far end of a 50-yard strip of pavement, a half-length bus chugs the first leg of its horseshoe pattern through the Warwick Center parking lot. Tangles of pastel-shirted students bulge around a tiny Plexiglas shelter as the shuttle wheezes to a stop, blows its hydraulic door and unloads a gang of passengers. A few seconds later, the impatient scholars mass into a pulsating line and gallop up the transports three short steps in awkward combinations of politesse and anxiety. They fill the five rows of worn, gray seats and spill into the aisles. Voices swarm and collide in the heavy, cramped air.
Perched at the helm of this rumbling freight, an auburn-haired woman counts her passengers and scratches a number onto a clipboard. Her uniform consists of a blue baseball cap with W.A.V.E. emblazoned across its front, a pair of oval sunglasses and a short-sleeved, button-down, white shirt with a pack of Doral menthols tucked secretively into the front pocket. Although she is a small woman, her presence extends beyond the nylon seatbelt that crosses her generous lap. Unbothered by the cacophony bubbling behind her, she scans the parking lot to ensure that all are aboard, closes the shuttle’s double doors, cranks the oversized steering wheel to the right and sighs into yet another run. She is the driver, and this is her bus.
Her name is Sherry Moreno. Her job is neither glamorous nor exciting. She wakes at 5 each morning, and she falls into bed 17 hours later.
She makes the same scheduled stops, traces the same monotonous loop and answers the same repeated questions (“Where is this shuttle going”? “Can you make this next stop?” “Are you going to park-and-ride?”) each day. Some people might consider her job boring, routine. But spend an afternoon talking to Sherry Moreno and you will discover that the cramped shuttle, the duplicated scenery and the clockwork pick ups and drop-offs fade quickly into the background. Spend an afternoon listening to Sherry Moreno and you will find yourself wishing that you had more time to hear everything she had to say.
“It would take you two years to write down all the stories I could tell you,” she says.
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