A long-time school bus driver from A US state of Minnesota has been buried in a specially designed casket.
Glen Davis worked for the Grand Meadow School for 55 years and was known by generations of pupils simply as ‘Glennie’.
Such was his love of driving the school bus each and every day, he wanted to be memorialized by the job that brought him so much joy.
Davis gave strict instructions that after he died he was to be laid to rest in a coffin painted exactly like a bus school he was driving.
He passed away on Saturday aged 88 and will be laid to rest in the casket he designed while he was still alive.
He began his driving career in 1949, the same year he graduated high school.
The first set of students he drove were his own classmates and friends but eventually the passengers turned into the children of his classmates and then their grandchildren.
By the time he retired, Davis had driven 800,000 miles and gone through five buses.
After the school round was done, Davis would head back to his other job as a farmer and would begin milking cows.
‘He just enjoyed the kids and driving the bus so much,’ said his daughter, Lisa Hodge to the Brainerd Dispatch.
Davis believed a bus casket would be the perfect expression of his personality and showcase his love of his lifelong profession.
The idea came from a conversation he had with one of his sons-in-law, Steve Durst, said Steve’s wife, Dawn.
Durst owned a graphic design business and had already seen a ‘school bus casket’ in a magazine.
A family friend, Jim Hindt, who owned a funeral home decorated one of his coffins by painting it himself in the orange color of a school bus.
He added some flair including a stop sign and the number 3 painted on the side – the number of the bus Davis first drove.
Upon presenting the coffin to Davis in 2015, he was overwhelmed.
‘He really got a kick out of it,’ Hodge said. ‘It’s what he loved about life.’
‘My dad said that all it was missing is an emergency exit door!’ she told the paper.
Davis’ funeral is set for 10:30am on Friday at St. Finbarr Catholic Church in Grand Meadow.
Although it will be a sad occasion, Hodge believes the mood will be lightened by the sight of the school bus casket in which Davis will take his final ride.
