For more than three decades, Myrna Sipes succeeded in a job in which many people would have trouble lasting a day.

Sipes, the first woman bus driver in Putnam City, drove a school bus for the district for 35 years. To place that in historical context, Richard Nixon was president of the United States when Sipes started driving a bus. She drove a bus so long that she ended up driving the children of children she had once driven.

On Wednesday, Nov. 2, Sipes was honored by her colleagues with a retirement reception at the district’s Transportation Department.

Driving a school bus has its challenges, and Sipes faced down every one of them.

Challenge number one is the weather. On hot summer days, bus drivers spend hours inside a bus that can be 15 degrees hotter than the already scorching air temperature. On cold winter mornings, drivers have the chilly task of getting to the transportation yard early enough to defrost their buses before they head out on routes. Wet streets increase the chances of skidding – not just by the bus, but by all the cars on the road.

Within days of starting her job in 1970, the weather presented Sipes with a welcome-to-the-job present: an ice storm.

"The windshield was frosty, I couldn’t see out the side windows and the mirrors were frozen over. I was driving an old 1964 Chevrolet bus with a clutch and no power steering. My feet were so cold that it hurt to push the clutch," Sipes recalls.

Like the rest of her colleagues, Sipes handled the storm without incident.

Challenge number two is the noise. In short, there’s a lot of it. The typical school bus carries perhaps 60 students who are talking, laughing, teasing and shouting in a confined area. Jackhammers, bowling alleys and jet planes taking off might be louder – at least, if you put them inside a large metal box. Together.

Sipes, though, has a slight hearing deficit. When she told students "If I can hear you, you're too loud," it was the truth.

Challenge number three is the behavior factor. On any given day, at least some of the 60 or so students on a bus are cranky, mischievous or high-spirited. Others don’t want to be bothered by students who are cranky, mischievous or high-spirited. Keeping such a group in line would challenge anyone. Bus drivers must do it with their back turned to the students.

For the most part, Sipes says, students on her bus behaved themselves.

"Over the years, I’ve been blessed by having a real good bunch of kids. There were some trips to the office, but on the whole it’s been a very good bunch," she says.

When students didn’t behave, Sipes dealt with them in a straightforward manner.

"I had one young man from that egged my bus on the last day of school. I turned the bus around, went to his home and he spent a lot of time cleaning the egg off. His mom stood out there and made sure he did a good job. He was very good after that," Sipes says.

Challenge number four is the unexpected. Drive a school bus for 35 years, and the surprising is bound to happen. For Sipes, a memorable experience came when she pulled up to an elementary bus stop one morning.

"All of a sudden a big German Shepard dog jumped on the bus. He went back about four rows, jumped up in the seat, sat down and faced the front. He was ready for a ride to school. Some of my students could have taken lessons from that dog. We had a time getting him off the bus, and he sure looked lonely as we drove off without him," Sipes recalls.

Challenge number five is safety. Drivers are responsible for delivering students safely to school and home. This is the ultimate responsibility, one that drivers feel deeply. The other challenges – weather, noise, student behavior and the unexpected – all contribute to the difficulty of driving safely. Other vehicles on the road and the decisions made by people driving them ratchet up the difficulty even higher. In 35 years of driving a bus, Sipes carried students more than 400,000 miles. She was involved in only three minor accidents and was not judged at fault in any of them.

As a bus driver Sipes may be gone, but she hasn’t been forgotten. Students she transported over the years continue to remember her.

"It’s been fun to meet some of the students at various places down through the years. I’ll either recognize them or they’ll recognize me. We’ll visit awhile and lots of times they’ll tell me ‘You’re the best bus driver I ever had’ or ‘Now I understand why we had to face the front, and keep our stuff out of the aisles.’ That’s music to my ears," Sipes says.