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Brummell has been a familiar name behind the wheel of Caroline County school buses since 1934, when Fred Harrison Brummell was tasked with taking Caroline’s youth to and from school.
Freddy Brummell, the original Fred Brummell’s grandson, remembers taking his grandfather’s bus when he started school in 1941. At that time it was a wooden bus with a large exhaust pipe that ran right down the center – a godsend in the colder months, and a real stinker in the heat.
When Fred Brummell passed away, his son, James Brummell Sr., took on the route. And so began an unorthodox family tradition of passing down bus numbers and routes rather than physical keepsakes as heirlooms. The family recalls now that James Sr. had the first flat-nosed bus in the county, which his wife, Catherine Brummell, took over after James Sr.’s death in 1966.
James Sr.’s sons Oliver (“Sonny”), Jimmy, and Freddy transported Caroline County students. Sonny and Jimmy have since passed away, but Freddy Brummell, now in his 90s, is best known for captaining Bus 52 in Denton for 58 years. Not only that, his late wife, Jean Brummell, was a substitute bus driver, and his current wife, Pat Adams Brummell, is the stringent operator of Bus 38. Jimmy’s substitute driver was, you guessed it, his sister, Charlotte Brummell.
Dawn Ellison, Derek Brummell, Yvonne Brummell, Kevin Brummell, and Shawn Hammond, all children or children-in-laws of Jimmy and Freddy, carry on this legacy. Together this singular family line has transported hundreds of thousands of Caroline County students. When asked why, Freddy Brummell said, “It’s a family tradition.”
But besides the genetics, the Brummell family shared that driving a school bus can be rewarding in more ways than one. For example, Shawn said the hours work perfectly within his lawn care business schedule. The Brummells also know better than to take for granted the trust Caroline County parents put into them every day. “Just as much can happen on a bus that can happen in the school,” Dawn said, “We’re not just bus drivers, we’re also role models.”
Dawn said that despite her father, Jimmy, teaching her how to drive a school bus, she never envisioned this path for herself. She laughs now at the teenaged version of herself that told her dad she wanted to “do something where I can use my brain,” not realizing how much thought driving a school bus actually requires.
So, she drove a van for MRDC Head Start, and then moved on to be a supervisor at Black & Decker. But fate would have it that, on her way home from being let go after the company closed, she ran into her cousin Derek at McDonald’s, where he asked if she’d drive his CCPS route for him. She’s now been driving since 2003. “I absolutely — and people think I’m crazy when I say this, but I mean it with all my heart – I love what I’m doing. I have a passion for it,” she said.
Yvonne Brummell, Kevin’s wife, also found herself tossed into the family business. She’d made a comment about being able to handle a route because she knew the area and people well, and not too long after, her father-in-law essentially handed her the keys and said “here’s your bus.”
Dawn explained that “driving bus” is more than just “driving bus.” “It becomes important when we diffuse situations and intervene to help the students. And bus drivers get the kids to the teachers,” she said. The family said that former students thanking them for their service even decades after they’ve graduated has become a common occurrence, and so has having said former students’ children and grandchildren on their buses.
Despite this generational run of family members working together, the Brummells said they haven’t had one falling out. “We love each other,” Kevin said, “That’s the key…like anything else, there may be some issues, but the issues don't separate us. We still remain strong.” This closeness also extends into the weekends, while, as Dawn is pastoring the International House of Worship in Federalsburg, her uncle Freddy is playing piano, and members of their family are singing together in the choir.
Freddy Brummell was recognized by the Caroline County Board of Education for surpassing one-million miles driven in 2013. He would retire a few years later. The family said that the most recent generation of Brummells isn’t as excited to take up the wheel, but they are confident the tradition will find them just as it found Dawn and Yvonne. Still, after nearly a century, the Brummell family tradition remains on the road.
