John the Bus Driver by Dustin Rice

Heroes come in many forms. Soldiers, police officers, EMTs, firefighters, all regularly do uncommon things, brave things, acts of service in the name of their fellow human beings. In February 1956, a bus driver proved himself an unlikely hero by doing the impossible.

Depending on who you ask, the number of lives John Hearon saved varies. Some say as few as 15, some as many as 35, but there were probably somewhere close to 21 people on the Continental Trailways’ Vista-Liner Bus as it left Amarillo at 5:30 am for Tucumcari, NM. The bus was already two hours behind schedule because of the snow. Snow in the Texas Panhandle is anything but abnormal in February, but no one knew how bad this particular weather event would be. At 9 am, the bus plowed headfirst into a chest-deep snow drift and stayed there. None of the passengers really showed concern as John reassured them that they could just wait for someone to drive by in order to flag down help. The problem was that they were the last vehicle to enter Route 66 from the east before it was shut down entirely.

After five hours John knew something was wrong. The snow continued to pile up in the worst blizzard any of them had ever witnessed. With two sandwiches between the entire busload of people and half a tank of diesel to keep the heater going, the clock was ticking. Adrian was the closest town to them, a few miles east as the crow flies, but uphill and into the wind. John knew that trek would be harder than setting out for Glenrio to the west. He made his mind up: he was walking.

John had to turn back once to fight blindness, so he fashioned a headband with slits to see through the storm. Using the telephone poles that ran along the now vanished highway, John walked almost 14 miles, fighting frostbite and hypothermia. He fixed his thoughts on the hot coffee at the diner next to Joe Brownlee’s service station.

That’s exactly where John collapsed. Outside the café, he whistled with everything he had. It had been nine hours since he left the bus. John told those who came to his rescue where to find the bus, and the cafe owner and several other men from Glenrio loaded up his Power Wagon with blankets and set out. It took four hours to get to the bus, even with chained tires and four-wheel drive. After several trips, all the passengers made it safely to Glennie, each owing their life to John.

By the time John got out of the hospital four days later, 61 inches of snow had fallen in the triangle between Tulia, Vega, and Glenrio. That’s five feet in four days, a record that still stands.