Traveling Down Route 34–

A Morning With George Oberstadt

By Jeff White

George Oberstadt hasn’t always driven Bus #3, but as for Route 34, he has plied its length for the last 24 years.

Monday mornings are like any other school morning for Mr Oberstadt, who just celebrated his 57th birthday last Sunday. After a relatively quick high school drop off, he catches up with other bus drivers in the high school’s parking lot, warding off the biting morning air by sitting inside one of the buses.

Tugging up his heavy green-plaid flannel shirt, he takes note of the time – 7:15 am. “We gotta get going,” he tells the other drivers, and just like that, they disperse and are on the road in less than a minute. 

He banks a right out of the parking lot, shaking his head at the row of traffic that stymies morning commuters heading into Sandy Hook.

The Sandy Hook School bus run is Mr Oberstadt’s longest, but it still is only one leg in a day full of driving. Besides morning high school runs and the Sandy Hook commute, he drops off Sandy Hook students only to start picking up kids from Hawley School. After that, it’s on to the middle school, and after a short reprieve, it is time for afternoon kindergarten pickups.

By all accounts, Mr Oberstadt’s typical Route 34 run covers the most area of any Newtown bus route. But for the slightly graying, wiry former house framer, the route is just long enough to tell a few stories.

“I’ve had some close calls on this run,” he confides as he makes his way to his first stop, Tanglewood Road. He recalls a particularly dangerous incident just over one of Route 34’s blind rises, when a dump truck lost control and started to slide right toward the bus’ back door. “It was an awful thing to see a 14-wheeler coming right behind you.” But the driver managed to arrest the slide and avoid a potentially tragic accident. Luckily, Mr Oberstadt will tell you, those incidents are extremely rare. The biggest problem that he has to contend with on a daily basis is drivers ignoring his lights.

Sarah, with a backpack larger than she is, gets on at Chestnut Hill Road. Down a ways, and around a few narrow bends, a row of seven cars awaits his arrival, their exhaust piping into the morning’s cold air. Mr Oberstadt knows them each by name, and greets them all, parents and students.

“I’ve had kids in kindergarten, and now I have their kids [who are in] kindergarten,” he laughs. And he is able to point to houses along his route where the parents are his former passengers. To see the changes in a person from child to adult is also to see the face of a town transform over the years.

“ A lot of the places where I used to hunt all have houses now,” he says. “It’s hard to believe the sizes and prices of the houses.” No doubt his bus, like Sandy Hook, has grown more crowded over the years. He estimates that on this particular Sandy Hook School run he carries 40 students.

As the bus bounces back toward Sandy Hook School, it can dawn on you that being a bus driver is the ideal occupation for someone who likes to travel. Mr Oberstadt looks forward to his summers off, when he heads out west to the Rocky Mountains with his wife of 38 years. “I love it out there,” he says.

But parents and friends love him just where he is, rounding bends along Grand Quarter and Hillcrest roads. “You want your kids on somebody’s bus? You got him,” says good friend Joanne Didonato of Sandy Hook School.

“George is one of the most experienced, confident drivers that we have here in Newtown, and all of the children on his buses are certainly lucky,” says Mary Kelly, the director of transportation for the district.

Mr Oberstadt, a Riverside Road resident who has lived in Newtown his whole life, does not appear to be going anywhere. “It has been a lot of fun,” Mr Oberstadt says of his years on Newtown’s roads. But what has been the best part? He has to conclude the kids. Yes, they are the best part of the job. “The kids are a lot of fun.”