Ask Crystal Enos about the Enos Bus Company on Pine Hill Road in Westport and her face will light up as she tells you about her dream business. As with the roads on which her vans operate, this story has some twists and turns.
The first turn came in 1996 when her co-worker of two years, a captain at the Dartmouth Fire Department, told her that his father needed another van driver for his company. Ms. Enos promptly earned a 7D van license and went to work for Albert J. Enos, Jr. Little did the boss know that he was hiring his future daughter-in-law. She married Joseph Enos, the youngest son of Albert and Ruthann Enos, in 2000. Over the next six years, her path would lead to taking over the business and starting a family.
Mr. Enos began his company with two buses in 1973, contracting with the Westport Public Schools to take children to and from school. By 1994, he decided to transport children with special needs and began purchasing specially equipped vans. By her second year on the job in 1997, Ms. Enos began transporting pre-schoolers. “My van was called the ‘Happy Van’ because I played nursery rhymes and kid’s music on it,” she remembers.
Ms. Enos may have had some sense of her eventual career destination. “In middle school, I helped with special needs kids for a year,” she says. “Later I worked in day care for a year and enjoyed working with little kids. I also learned sign language, which would have been useful to me when I was a fire fighter or now if I ever drive a van with a deaf child,” she said.
She had on the job training, as well. “I began to help my mother in law set the van schedules in September. The three business courses I took from Mr. Styan at Dartmouth High School really helped with that."
The Enos Bus Company’s riders are all children living in Westport who have instructional education plans (I.E.P.s) declaring their eligibility for transportation to schools in the region. For safety reasons, some student’s plans require that they be attended in the van by a monitor.
The company, contracted by the Westport School Department, drives students to schools in Middleboro, Taunton, Providence, Seekonk, Swansea, New Bedford, and Randolph. The vans are constantly in use since many of the children are involved in all year programs.
“We have to update every few years and will buy two new vans this year. We have to customize the vans. The roofs are cut off, roll bars are added and the seats are taken out so it can carry six passengers and two wheel chairs.” Ms Enos explained. The 7 D law limits a van to carry no more than eight passengers plus driver.
The children, ages ranging from 3 to 22 years old, might be autistic or have severe hearing or sight disabilities. At their 22nd birthday, they are no longer eligible for transportation through the school department.
2003 represented a crossroads for the whole Enos family. Albert Enos had retired, his wife Ruthann was ready step down to care for her husband, who had become ill, and Ms. Enos first son, Jordan. was born. “After talking it over with my husband, I asked to take the business over. My mother in law gave me the vans to start with, taught me how to do the payroll, and we went from there,” Ms. Enos said.
July marks the third anniversary of her decision and she hasn’t looked back. Her second son, Connor, was born last year. Her husband continues working as a trucker at the MBS Trucking hauling for Westport Sand and Gravel. The whole family is on wheels.
When Ms. Enos says she considers her eight drivers and five monitors like a family, it’s not just a figure of speech. Her husband Joe’s godparents, his godmother’s sister, his godfather’s sister, and Crystal Enos’s cousin are on the team. The niece of one of her drivers just became a driver. Several other drivers or bus monitors have known each other for years.
One thing they all have in common is the aptitude to work with these special kids. Some adults have driven or monitored the same children for years and talk about them as “my kids.”
The only sad note at the annual BBQ and clamboil that Ms. Enos throws for her employees was that two veteran drivers, Westport residents George Lewis (in June) and his wife Mary Lou (in November), are retiring. Mr. Lewis, a former employee of the Westport Highway Department, started driving in 1996, the same year Ms. Enos joined the company.
With Ms. Enos’s network of friends and relatives, she is sure to find drivers to replace the familiar faces that the area’s special needs children and their parents have come to be comfortable with over the years. “I want parents to know that if their child is eligible for transportation, we can transport them,” she says with a smile.
And, most likely, to make them members of her extended family.
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