America celebrates 80 years of ‘School Bus Yellow’

Happy 80th anniversary to “School Bus Yellow,” which became the uniform color of America’s fleet of school buses in 1939.

Dr. Frank W. Cyr, an education professor at Teachers College, part of Columbia University in New York City, is widely regarded as the “Father of the Yellow School Bus.”

His grant-supported work ranks among the most important pieces of research in the history of academia.

The Rockefeller Foundation awarded Dr. Cyr $5,000 in 1937 ($87,400 in today’s inflation-adjusted economy) to go out and study ways to improve rural education and transportation. It proved to be an excellent and worthwhile investment.

Dr. Cyr found that children were riding to school in all kinds of vehicles, ranging from horse-drawn wheat wagons to trucks and buses of all different sizes and colors (one district, hoping to instill patriotism in the children, painted its buses red, white and blue).

Freelance writer Ryan Lee Price of Corona, Calif., dug deeper into Dr. Cyr’s findings related to the shortcomings of rural school transportation. He reported that Dr. Cyr said the situation was “terrible.”

In the late 1930s, each state had its own standards for school transportation vehicles, and “the manufacturers had to cope with the differing rules, requirements and tastes from 48 states. For every different color, the bus companies had to have different booths to spray-paint them,” Dr. Cyr said. This was a huge kink in the economies that could be achieved in “assembly line mass production.”

Dr. Cyr completed his analysis and organized a conference in 1939 on the Columbia University campus, drawing in school administrators and transportation officials from all 48 states as well as key stakeholders, such as specialists from the school bus manufacturing and paint companies, Price reported.

Delegates met for seven days and agreed on 44 school bus safety standards, including specifications regarding body length, ceiling height, aisle width, axles and brakes. The outcome was a 42-page pamphlet containing the nation’s first school bus safety standards.

The most significant development from the 1939 conference was an agreement concerning a uniform color for the school bus vehicles. Officially, the delegates settled on a hue that is now known as “National School Bus Glossy Yellow.”

The conference delegates described the tone as a “warm orangish-yellow,” not to be confused with a warmly yellowish-orange.

Color does matter, explained Jill Morton of Honolulu, a noted color psychologist and branding expert.

She says: “The yellow family of colors gets your attention faster than any other color. People notice yellow objects first.”

“Even when you are looking straight ahead, you can see a yellow object that is not in front of you ‘in the corners of your eyes’ much sooner than any other color, even red. Scientists say lateral peripheral vision for detecting yellows is 1.24 times greater than for red.”

The yellow family is also regarded as the easiest to see in the semi-darkness of early morning and late afternoon, the times of day when the school buses tended to be “out and about.”

In 1989, Columbia University celebrated the 50-year anniversary of Dr. Cyr’s contribution to the nation. Columbia’s President Philip Michael Timpane said the 1939 school bus conference was “truly a milestone event in the annals of American education.”

“It is hard to imagine today any area of education policy where you could gather any number of people in one room and cause such a national change to occur,” he said.

The “School Bus Yellow” paint color was incorporated in 1956 within the Federal Standard Color System, which essentially is the U.S. government’s official paint color palette. The color was labeled first as 13432 but later as 13415. (They look the same to my eye.)

The most comparable color to “School Bus Yellow” in the Pantone Matching System (PMS) for ink colors used in the graphics arts and printing industries is 123-C. Within the Hex Code system, key in ffd800, to see how “School Bus Yellow” looks to designers who work on the digital media and website design side.

Dagnabbit. Wouldn’t you know it? “School Bus Yellow” is included in the rainbow of colors offered in the bigger boxes of Crayola crayons.

William Cyr who, as a child, asked his father the professor, “If you’re the father of the yellow school bus, what does that make me?”

Dr. Cyr replied: “Whenever you see a school bus pass by, you could say, “There goes one of my brothers or sisters.”

Will legislators stick their necks out on NC nickname bill?

It would take an act of the North Carolina General Assembly to select an official state nickname, and Senator Don Davis, D-Snow Hill, volunteered to set the wheels in motion.

He introduced Senate Bill 345 on March 25 to declare “The Old North State” as the state’s official nickname.

The immediate response from the gallery was hip hip hooray…but then came the cautionary amber light signaling: “Dagnabbit; not so fast, my friend.”

What happens to North Carolina’s other nickname – “The Tar Heel State?” It appears passage of S.B. 345 would cause “The Tar Heel State” to be shunned and exiled to languish deep in the wilderness of longleaf pines.

It will be interesting to track the movement of S.B. 345…or lack thereof…during this session of the state legislature.

Sen. Davis, who is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, holds a doctorate degree from East Carolina University. He has done his research and has his facts in order.

“In 1710, the Carolina colony was divided into two colonies, North Carolina and South Carolina, and since that time North Carolina has been referred to as ‘The Old North State,’” Sen. Davis said.

“Furthermore, both the official song and the official toast of North Carolina are known as ‘The Old North State.’”

Therefore, the proposed legislation rationalizes: “‘The Old North State’ should be adopted as the official nickname of North Carolina.”

For the sake of consistency, Sen. Davis comes to a logical conclusion, one that is validated by fact checkers within the cubicles of the state library system.

The division of Carolina into North and South was completed at a meeting of the Lords Proprietors held at Craven House in London on December 7, 1710. Common usage of the term “The Old North State” certainly predates the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

The term “Tar Heel” appears to have originated somewhat later, rising to prominence during The War Between the States in the 1860s. There are varying versions of the story; some are juicier…and stickier than others.

The economic driver during North Carolina’s infancy was the harvesting of vast pine forests and the production of “naval stores” – tar, pitch, rosin and turpentine. These items were vitally important to England’s maritime industry.

Historian Walter McKenzie Clark’s account of the Tar Heel story takes readers to the site of a Civil War skirmish at Reams Station in Dinwiddie County, Va. There, a fighting force of North Carolinians stood its ground for the Confederacy, while a Virginian regiment skedaddled.

As the story unfolds, one of those Virginia soldiers supposedly taunted a North Carolina militiaman, asking: “Any more tar down in the Old North State, boys?”

Quick as a flash came the answer: “No, not a bit; old Jeff’s bought it all up.” (The reference was to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America.)

“Is that so; what is he going to do with it?”

“He’s going to put it on you-un’s heels to make you stick better in the next fight.”

R.B. Creecy, another revered North Carolina historian, reported that Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, “upon hearing of the incident at Reams Station, said: ‘God bless the Tar Heel boys,’ and from that they took the name.”

An essay in NCPedia contributed by Michael W. Taylor stated: “The official seal of approval of ‘Tar Heel’ as a nickname for North Carolinians came when Gov. Zebulon B. Vance visited the Army of Northern Virginia on March 28, 1864.”

Gov. Vance made a point of addressing the soldiers as “Fellow Tar Heels,” citing “we always stick.”

As Taylor tells it: Ten years later (in 1874), the Town of Tar Heel in Bladen County was settled as a landing on the Cape Fear River. The state operated a ferry at this landing, and it was a major loading point for vessels that transported commodities downriver about 90 miles to market in Wilmington.

“The major product was turpentine by the barrels,” Taylor said. “Tar Heel had several turpentine stills, and the result of transporting…leaking barrels caused a tar-like material to be found around the landing and the access to the river.”

“When the community people talked of going to the village, it was said they were going to get tar on their heels,” further advocating the name Tar Heel.

Before we vote on the North Carolina state nickname, let’s delve a little deeper into the lyrics of the state song and the words of a poem that became the state toast.

Plan ahead to see the 2024 solar eclipse

Forward thinkers may want to start plotting and planning where they want to be on April 8, 2024, to view the next total eclipse of the sun.

Actually, Michael Bakich has already done the plotting for us. He is a senior editor at Astronomy magazine, based in Waukesha, Wis., near Milwaukee.

He has put his readers on notice, as a public service, because the totality of the 2024 solar eclipse will eclipse that of the Great American Eclipse of Aug. 21, 2017, by well more than a minute at the centerline of the path.

Bakich said he wants to start building the buzz early, so more Americans can “experience the awesome wonder of a total solar eclipse” on April 8, 2024. It’s just five years down the road.

“The length of totality varies from one eclipse to the next,” he said. “The reason is that Earth is not always the same distance from the sun, and the moon is not always the same distance from Earth. The Earth-sun distance varies by 3% and the Earth-moon distance varies by 12%.”

As it works out, Bakich reports the April 8, 2024, eclipse with maximum totality of 4 minutes, 28 seconds will be 67% longer than the one in 2017.

“Only totality reveals the true celestial spectacles…the sun’s glorious corona and 360 degrees of sunset colors,” he said.

Bakich said the 2024 eclipse center line will run diagonally southwest to northeast piercing 14 states: Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

“Those wishing to observe the 2024 eclipse from the same location that the center line crossed during the 2017 eclipse should head to the Village of Makanda, Ill., which lies just south of Carbondale,” he said.

The people of Makanda are already counting down, having cashed in from the tourism traffic that the 2017 eclipse generated for the village with an official population of 561. Makanda’s 2017 blackout lasted 2 minutes, 40 seconds. The 2024 eclipse will be a whopper – lasting 4 minutes, 8 seconds.

The community’s roots date back to 1845, when a construction camp to build the Illinois Central Railroad Chicago to New Orleans sprouted up. The village is named for a legendary Native American chieftain, Makanda.

Historians determined there were “five principal tribes that inhabited the southern Illinois territory in the 1700s – the Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Mitchigamie, Peoria and Tamaroa. Only the Kaskaskia and Peoria continued to exist in the early 1800s.” Chief Makanda’s true ancestry remains a source of intrigue.

Today’s Makanda has grown into a trendy arts community, according to Kim Miller, a reporter with the West Palm Beach (Fla.) Post. She was there on assignment for the 2017 eclipse and interviewed Nina Kovar of Visions Art Gallery. “This place has always been a funky elbow in the road, and we know how to party,” Kovar said.

In 2017, the party was at the end of the reddish-orange painted line through Makanda that defined the center line for the eclipse. It led eclipse seekers right into the front door of artist Dave Dardis’ place, The Rainmaker Studio, and into his “secret garden” out back…where the band played on and on.

Byron Hetzler of The Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale described Dardis’ 2017 eclipse marker: “It looks like the mast of a ship, coming right out of the sidewalk, complete with a crow’s nest, a pirate’s flag, one of Dave’s giant praying mantises and a commemorative plaque.”

Pray tell what the local artistic sculptor and jewelry maker will come up with for 2024?

An immediate challenge, however, is the center line of the next eclipse isn’t coming through Dardis’ property. In fact, the line crosses Cedar Lake in Makanda. The body of water is a 1,750-acre reservoir that was created in 1974 by the damming of Cedar Creek, a tributary of the Big Muddy River, which in turn flows into the Mississippi River.

Cedar Lake is within the Shawnee National Forest and welcomes kayaking, canoeing and fishing. The small print shows that small outboard motors are allowed (not to exceed 10 horsepower). Depending on the size of the boat, a 10-hp motor would putt-putt along at about 15 miles per hour, give or take.

That’s perfect…for the 2024 CLEF (Cedar Lake Eclipse Flotilla). For spectators, it will be a 4-minute quickie…but still a once-in-a-lifetime experience in the sky and on the water.

We’ll put a bug in the ears of Makanda Mayor Tina Shingleton as well as those of Dave Dardis. Dardis told reporter Miller that he declined the popular eclipse-driven pandemonium in 2017 to have him crowned “King of Makanda.”

He said in jest that he’d just as soon be known as “Prince Dave”…and declared the royal beverage in the Principality of Makunda to be Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Dagnabbit. That’s a man who appreciates the finer things in life.

Ready to make your solar eclipse 2024 plans to be in Makunda?

Not so fast, warns Michael Bakich. Consider all your options first, he advises…including the weather.