High-powered Men Drive School Buses in Skaneateles

Creator and former owner of EarQ and the former head of research and development at Welch Allyn get behind the wheels of school buses in Skaneateles every week

By David Figura

 

Two former high-powered Central New York businessmen who took early retirements are driven to have a lasting impact on their community and beyond.

Duane Wiedor, 66, former head of research and development at Welch Allyn (currently Baxter) and Ed Keller, 56, creator and former owner of EarQ, a national hearing aid supply and service company, have been enjoying their retirement years by driving school buses.

In addition, the two, both car enthusiasts, have created Skaneateles Cares Car Club, a social-oriented LLC that gets others with similar interests together for monthly events. The club has the long-term goal of raising $1 million to donate to Golisano Children’s Hospital in Syracuse. The money would be used to build a playground that could be used for therapeutic purposes.

Both men live in Skaneateles.

At the end of his full-time work career Wiedor oversaw more than 800 employees and an annual $75 million budget. He said he retired at 62, a couple of months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. He added his father died of cancer at age 56.

“I was born with birth defects in my heart. When I was 62, I had the opportunity to take an early retirement and enjoy the next phase of life,” he said.

Back then, he said, he didn’t have a game plan of what to do in retirement — only a list of hobbies.

“A plan is a well thought-out sequence that leads to an outcome. If that’s the case, I wasn’t that person. I restore vintage cars for a hobby. I love to golf. I’m a boater. We live on the lake and use it quite a bit,” he said. “We’re really family-oriented. We have four children and 11 grandchildren.”

His children and their spouses, many in the field of education, encouraged him to try teaching. Instead, Wiedor stopped by the Skaneateles Central School District bus garage and asked if they needed any help.

Several months later, Wiedor was trained and driving a school bus for First Student, the private company that supplies the school bus fleet and drivers for the district.

It turns out there’s a nationwide shortage of school bus drivers, he said.

“It’s not for everyone,” he said. “As a retiree, I can split two and a half hours in the morning and two and a half hours in the afternoon. I’m not doing it for the income, health insurance, whatever. I just thought I’d help out in the community.”

Wiedor said he fell in love with the kids who rode his bus.

“I have a responsibility to these kids. I can set them up [for school each day] and help them get home, mentally. I get them to open up and they talk to me — snippets about what’s going in their lives,” he said.

He said he makes a point every morning of speaking to each kid as they board his bus with a cheery “Good morning.”

“I’m teaching them it’s OK to look an adult in the face and say good morning,” he said. “Sometimes a kid will get on the bus and have a down face on. I say, ‘Hey, what’s happening? Did you spill your cereal on yourself?’ Or if I don’t get a response, I’ll quietly follow up with an ‘I’m sorry, howzitgoin’ this morning?’”

At times when the younger kids are waiting to be unloaded in front of the school, Wiedor said he’ll grab his microphone and loudspeaker on the bus and do a little teaching.

“During my work career I was fortunate enough to learn greetings and salutations in more than a dozen different languages,” he said. “I’ll ask the kids, ‘How would you like to greet your teacher today? In Hebrew? German? Hungarian? Italian?’”

Wiedor added, “And here’s the joke. I’m the only school bus driver who’s legally allowed to kiss a kid every morning on the bus.”

“How is that possible? I get to pick up my granddaughter every morning on my route,” he explained. “She’s the first on and the last off each day. And next year, her little sister is starting kindergarten. I’ll get to see [two] of my grandchildren every day. What a treat!”

Wiedor noted training to be a school bus driver “is educational and the hours are great — especially for retirees.”

“And between the morning and afternoon rides, if the weather is good, I can still get nine or 18 holes of golf in if no one is in front of me on the course,” he said.

Keller began his work career in sales and eventually started his own business, EarQ, which expanded across the country and eventually included a partnership with the NFL Players Association. In 2019, he sold the business to a long-time friend.

He retired at the age of 50. But what was next? He said he tried “a lot of different things” including the Big Brother program and joining the volunteer fire department. “Some things worked out, others didn’t,” he said.

“I liked driving stuff. I like cars. I liked to drive something cool. I liked to be important but invisible and I didn’t want to worry if it was going to pay my bills,” he said. “I wanted to drive a school bus.”

He applied for a job with First Student to drive for the Skaneateles School District and was hired. What followed was more than four years of driving for the district.

However, this fall, he decided to take a break from the job to travel more with his wife and family and to visit his mother. He’s currently considering returning to school bus driving in 2025, possibly as a substitute driver.

While driving for Skaneateles, Keller said he tried to have a positive impact on his riders and, like Wiedor, enjoyed making connections with his riders.

“You hear about their successes, their failures, their concerns, how they did on tests, in the Little League game the past weekend, where they’re considering going to college,” he said. “And sometimes, they’ll ask your advice and you get to share with them 10 seconds of wisdom.”

He added that he tried to “create an experience” for his riders. Among his efforts was his decision to become the “Crazy Shirt Guy.”

He started off by Googling “crazy shirts.” He purchased a few, wore them while driving his bus and started taking suggestions from the kids of things they’d like to see on his shirts. He ended up buying 60 shirts that he wore on a rotating basis.

“I told the kids they could call me Ed, Bus Driver or Crazy Shirt Guy. I didn’t care,” he said.

The latter name stuck.

His collection of crazy shirts included one for every holiday, dancing bananas, cats and pizza, a cowboy kitten and a pirate sloth riding through space and spitting out a rainbow.

 

The car club

The idea for a car club originated with Keller and was developed as the two men were getting trained as school bus drivers.

“One day Duane drove one of his cars [to work] while we were both in training and I shared with him that I was a car nut, too. We soon became best friends,” Keller said.  “I told him I’d like to do something with cars, but I’d like it to be something for charity.”

Wiedor has restored and owns more than a half dozen cars including a ’31 Ford Model A Tudor; a 1932 Ford Model B hotrod; a 1941 DeSoto Custom; a 1954 Chrysler Windsor Deluxe, a 1960 Corvette Convertible; a 1964 Ford Mustang Convertible and a 1973 Ford Mustang Convertible.

Keller’s holdings include a 1970 Mustang, a 2005 Chrysler Crossfire, a 2010 Ferrari 458, a 2021 Porsche 718 Boxster — and a 1927 Whippet school bus converted into a hotrod that he occasionally drives in local parades.

Wiedor said he took Keller’s idea, “gave him my twists and turns and we went with it.”

“Duane and I decided to set up a nonprofit and ended up calling it Skaneateles Cares Car Club,” Keller said.

“We wanted to create something to give people a reason to get their cars out and drive them,” he said. “We plan out really nice driving routes to unique destinations all over CNY.

“Our driving events typically have around 30 cars with two people in each car,” Keller said. “One time we all went to the Million Air Syracuse hanger at Hancock International Airport. We had all these beautiful cars from all different eras parked inside the hanger with all these private jets and we enjoyed a gourmet meal.”

Other destinations have included day trips to historic Fort Ontario in Oswego, wineries, noteworthy restaurants and various “cute stops” along the way. “Once we had mimosas behind the roller coaster at Sylvan Beach,” Keller said.

Wiedor said the final destination of a club outing often involves a meal, at times catered, with each member covering their costs.

Members of the club, which has been in existence since 2021, donate $1,000 annually, with all the money going to the club’s Golisano Hospital fund.

To date, more than $100,000 has been raised, Wiedor said.