A Nurse Recognized DeKalb County Bus Driver Henry Mercer After an Emory Appointment Because She Rode His Bus Nearly 40 Years Ago, and He Just Marked 46 Years at the Wheel

Forty-six years after Henry Mercer first took the wheel of a DeKalb County school bus, a stranger at Emory knew his face. Mercer, who marked the anniversary on Nov. 1, was asking a nurse for directions after an appointment when she realized she had ridden his bus nearly 40 years ago, WSAW reported in a story first produced by Atlanta’s WUPA. The Georgia district he drives for transports more than 45,000 students a day.

Two nurses and a question about directions

The encounter happened about two months before the story ran, according to WSAW. Mercer and his wife had finished an appointment at Emory and stopped to ask two nurses where to go. One of them looked at the driver and recognized him.

She had been a student on his school bus in the mid-1980s, the station reported, around 1985 or 1986, which is nearly 40 years ago. The report did not name the nurse. It described the moment as a meeting between a rider from the 1980s and a driver who was still on the job.

Mercer marked 46 years as a DeKalb County school bus driver on Nov. 1, 2026, the station said, so the anniversary arrived within weeks of the hallway-style reunion at the hospital.

A job that began with benefits and grew from there

Mercer told reporter Jamal Goss that he started driving for the benefits, and that the work grew on him over time. Asked what he hopes his years behind the wheel have meant, he said he hopes he has made a positive impact on the number of students he has driven.

Mercer has been a fixture of the district for a long time. In an earlier 11Alive report from a district breakfast for bus drivers during National School Bus Safety Week, he was described as having transported students for 43 years. A student once told him he was the closest thing to a dad that the student had, according to that report, and Mercer said getting children to school and back home safely is what he loves to do.

What the district’s transportation chief says

DeKalb County School District transports more than 45,000 students a day, according to WSAW. Raymond Stanley, the district’s executive director of transportation and fleet, told the station that many children would lack a consistent way to get to school without bus drivers. He called the job very, very important, especially for students with special needs.

The district’s own site lists transportation among its operations divisions, with links for dispatch, safety and training, and a recruiting page called Drive for DeKalb Schools.

A district that keeps looking for drivers

Long service matters in a district that has struggled to staff its routes. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in October 2023 that DeKalb still needed about 150 drivers, roughly 20% of its workforce, and that the district’s chief operations officer called bus drivers the district’s “No. 1 challenge.” Entry pay was $20.55 an hour then, with a $2,500 hiring bonus and paid commercial license training, the AJC reported. Those figures are from 2023 and may have changed.

Another recent Parent Diaries story, about a Saint Paul store clerk who boarded a bus with students aboard, shows how much riders depend on the person in the driver’s seat.

Why the bus remains a safe way to school

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration calls the school bus one of the safest vehicles on the road and says that less than 1% of all traffic fatalities involve children on school transportation vehicles. Its page reports 119 occupants killed in school transportation vehicles from 2015 through 2024, 49 of them drivers and 70 of them passengers.

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: Echtner – CC BY 3.0/Wikimedia Commons