This is the first in a series that seeks to showcase some of our schools’ unsung heroes. In my ten years as an education reporter and former educator, and in my almost 19 years as a parent, I have seen many amazing educators honored with well-deserved pomp and circumstance. They each will be the first to tell you that they share their honors with their colleagues, that they could not do what they do each day without the support of so many. It is my goal during this school year to shed some much-needed light on those employees working behind the scenes in Cranston schools who may not receive the spotlight, but for whom it is also well-deserved.

Tammy and I peered together at the calendar app on my phone, shading our eyes from the sun, trying to choose a date to meet up for coffee so we could talk about her 32 years as a school bus driver for the Cranston Public Schools. As we stood outside of her bus, now empty of her high school students, one of which is my own, I told her about how just the day before I was so thrown off by the day out of school for a holiday, that I’d missed a dentist appointment I’d scheduled for myself, and that my memory just wasn’t what it used to be. She laughed, and said that she’d had to remind all the kids who normally take instruments to school for band practice that it was Tuesday, and not Monday, and waited as they each ran back inside for their instruments.

“They’d come out without their instrument, and I’d say, ‘Don’t you have band today?’ And they’d have to run back inside and get them. It’s a good thing I know their schedules,” she laughed, as I shook my head in amazement, because I’m pretty sure I don’t even know which days my own child has band.

“This is why I chose you to be my first Unsung Hero, Tammy Pelland,” I said. “You’re extraordinary.”

And she is.

I’ve known Tammy as our kids’ bus driver since my oldest daughter started kindergarten at Glen Hills Elementary School in 2005. She has watched as we've put one daughter after another on her bus, year after year, and she hugged our oldest goodbye after graduation this year. She is most special to us for all of the little things she does, treating our kids as if they were her own, checking on them when they have been sick, singing Happy Birthday to them each year on their special days, celebrating the holidays with songs and treats, and bringing them home safely during a snowstorm, each and every time. I’ve always said that my kids were safer driving home in the snow with her, than with me.

Not many know that Tammy lost her own child after complications from an illness, just five years ago. Her son Christopher was the love of her life, and I will never forget waking my kids up the first morning after I'd heard the news. Her heart was forever broken, and ours were broken for her. I remember going to the wake and saying to her as I cried, one mother to another, “Tammy, I don’t even know what to say to you.”

“I know,” she said. “I know.”

The kids missed her tremendously while she was out, just as they did whenever she had been out sick for even a day. We all hoped she'd return, and after some time, she did. We were never so happy to see her face in the window of the bus on that first morning back, a day that had to be so incredibly hard for her. But after 32 years on this route, Tammy needed to see all of our kids as much as we needed to see her.

“People would ask me later, how I was able to come to work,” she told me during our interview. “It was the kids that get me through it. When I took time out, it was my family that helped me through it, but when I went back, it was the kids. They’d hug me, they’d check in with me. Many of the families, current and past, came to see me those days. They all came together for me.”

It is also the kids who keep her going on the job each and every day.

“I love the kids,” she said. “I love their stories, I love seeing them grow up. I think I hear a story every day.”

Having started out as a bus monitor in 1986, Tammy Pelland had no idea that after just two months on the job, she’d be able to jump into the job as the driver of that route. It’s been her route ever since.

It’s not an easy job, but it’s a job she loves, and it’s the special things she does, the care she takes, that makes her so good at it.

“I will always take a kid home first when they’re sick,” she said. “I’ll do the route in reverse, and drop them off first. Sometimes it means I have to double back a couple of times because someone might not be there at the bus stop for their child, and I’ll never leave them. I pretty much have a plan for every kid though. For 95 percent of them, I know who else then can take them if there’s an emergency or if someone isn’t right there for them.”

Not only will she go out of her way for a sick child, she’ll also go out of her way to bring something back that they forgot on the bus, if she thinks they’ll need it that night.

“Tammy's care for the children extended beyond the school day. If anyone left a backpack, jacket or other personal item on the bus, you would see Tammy on her way home from work delivering the item in case it was needed that night,” said Tom Kelly, a parent of three now-adult children who were once her passengers. “If one of the children was absent for a couple of days, Tammy would always take the time to ask about them. If she knew of an illness within the family she would go out of her way to not only be kind to the child, but the rest of the family.”

Kelly stated that to this day, his kids will check in and ask how she is doing. “As a testament to the impact she had on my children, if they are visiting and see a school bus, they immediately ask how Tammy is,” he said. “One son brought his children one afternoon so they could see Tammy driving the bus. That's how special she was to them. She truly became part of our extended family. How fortunate we were!”

He also noted that she went out of her way to help their youngest son transition to the school bus ride with his brothers.

“My youngest child had a significant physical disability and 25 years ago his desire was to ride the ‘big bus’ with his older brothers,” Kelly said. “Tammy provided that opportunity, making him always feel the same as the other children We had complete faith in her that all would be well.”

She also makes it her business to know ‘her kids’ and she can tell if something is wrong.

“Most of the time I can tell when they’re off, I can tell when they’ve had a bad day, and I always try to check in with them,” she said.

Now, after 32 years, and many more to go, she’s had the kids of her former kids stepping onto her bus, although not yet any grandkids of former kids, although that day might still be coming, as she plans to keep on driving for at least ten more years.

“I’d never leave this run because of the way I’m treated by the kids and by the parents,” she said. “I used to say that 70 was my time to quit, and I’m not sure I’ll be there until 70, but I’ll be here for a while.”

Until then, she will continue her daily runs for the elementary, middle and high schools, and continue to have a significant impact on ‘her kids’ each and every day. She’ll continue to catch them every now and again, walking across a graduation stage, either at the high school or college level, and looks forward to continuing to celebrate their milestones along with them, after welcoming them on to her bus so many years before, and maybe not quite truly realizing the impact all of those seemingly small, but personal touches had on them each day.

“The first day of school as a child or teenager is always an exciting but nerve wracking time, “ wrote Katie, Elena and Emily Zanzarov recently. As former students of Tammy’s, the three sisters reflected on the impact she had on them. “When we look back to those days, we are eternally grateful to have had Tammy take us to school on the bus every day. Tammy had a warm, contagious smile that brightened up our days as we rode the bus to and from school. It was the small but thoughtful things she always did or said that we will always remember and keep in our hearts.”

If you have an Unsung Hero you’d like me to feature from a Cranston school, please email me with the details at jenniferlcowart@gmail.com.