It’s the last stop for a small town’s favorite driver.
Glen Davis, a driver for Grand Meadow public schools in Minnesota, will be laid to rest in a casket designed to look like one of the yellow school buses he drove for 55 years before his retirement in 2005.
Known by the thousands of schoolchildren he hauled to and from school as Glennie, Davis died Saturday at the age of 88. But he’d had his funeral planned — including the zany coffin — since 2015.
Davis began driving a bus in 1949 when he was just 17, and logged over 800,000 miles in five vehicles throughout his career, according to his local paper, the Post Bulletin. Davis also worked as a farmer on the side, and could be found milking cows after completing his morning route.
The idea for a bus casket was originally thought up by Davis’ son-in-law years ago — although this summer, a beloved Tennessee bus driver, David Wright, was buried in a similarly custom casket.
A few of the uncanny details on Davis’ afterlife-bound box: a red stop sign painted on the side; black hardware finishes and replicas of safety lights; and a “03” emblazoned in black paint to signify the number of the first bus Davis drove.
The flashy wares were a gift from Jim Hindt, owner of Hindt Funeral Home, who says Davis and his family extended him neighborly love when his daughter, now 16 and healthy, was diagnosed with cancer at 18 months.
“We were going through a hard time. Both him and his family were just very good to us,” Hindt said in a 2015 Post Bulletin article about the casket. “I wanted to repay it somehow.”
When Davis saw the particular piece, he reportedly got emotional. “Oh, good gosh, I cried a few times,” he told the Bulletin.
His family hopes the sight of the casket will lighten the mood at his funeral, to be held on Friday morning.
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