Transit Story
A Vermont author rolls out a new book about an old bus company B y Le on T h o m p so n
matthew thorsen
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ylvia Nichols Allen snuggles under a experience with the company. (She ended up light-blue afghan on her leather recliner, graduating from Johnson State College with a offering a stark contrast with the photo history degree in 1969.) of herself on the wall overhead. In the “I felt that somebody needed to tell a history portrait, taken just before Christmas last year of the company, because, in a few years, everyone in her Essex home, Allen, 64, is standing with would forget about it,” Allen says. “So I started her husband of 20 years, Michel, 67. Waves of bringing a notepad and pen when I went to see Charlie. strawberry-blond hair frame her grinning face. “He was a wonderful man, so gentle and polite,” Now Allen is 30 pounds lighter. Despite the midsummer heat, she’s dressed for winter in she continues. “I told him he was my second gray corduroy pants and two shirts. A pink cloth father.” From 2008 to 2010, Allen gathered information covers her bare head. On January 2, a doctor diagnosed Allen with stage IV nonsmoker’s lung on VTC founder William S. Appleyard, whom she cancer, just days after a CAT scan revealed several applauds for fostering a “culture of family” in his small tumors on her lungs. Quickly, the cancer company. She also sifted through materials at the Vermont Historical Society and conducted metastasized to her spine and brain. nearly 20 extensive interviews with That isn’t stopping Allen from talkpast VTC employees, including ing about her first book: The People some who worked there in the Will Be Served: A History of the early years. Vermont Transit Bus Company. “That was the most fun I Self-published via Amazon’s had with this book,” Allen CreateSpace, it’s the only says. “They’re entertaining complete written history as hell, the salt of the of VTC, a public transporearth. There are few tation staple from 1929 to old-time Vermonters like 2008, when Greyhound them around anymore.” absorbed it. Allen also spent hours “It takes a tremendous and hours in the Williston amount of effort to promote basement of Ken Bessette a book,” Allen concedes. “And Jr., whose father was a VTC now that mine is out, I don’t S y lv ia N i c h o l s A l len driver for 42 years and a tour have the energy for it. It’s more guide for eight. Bessette has all the than I can do.” scrapbooks and notebooks filled with She was unsure she would live to see his father’s writings about VTC. Those include The People Will Be Served. Allen survived breast cancer twice in 2000, memories of the company he relayed in a regular undergoing two mastectomies, but lung cancer is column, “I Remember When…,” that he wrote for harder, she notes. Instead of offering a prognosis, the Williston Whistle (now the Williston Observer) doctors told her she would need a debilitating until his death in 1995. Ken Bessette Sr. never finished high school, and treatment every three weeks for the rest of her life. She has no appetite and little strength, but feels no “his spelling and grammar were atrocious,” Allen says, but he was a master storyteller — so much so pain. “The book helps keep my spirits up,” Allen says. that Allen filled the last chapter of her book with “I’m very proud of it. I feel like I’ve done a service Bessette’s lively, engaging anecdotes about VTC. “He loved Vermont,” Allen observes. “He loved and contributed something important to society Vermont history and knew so much about all the and Vermont history.” Allen says she harbored the desire to write towns.” Now Allen wants to help Ken Bessette Jr. a book over the 25 years that she served as the Harwood Union High School librarian, but always collect his father’s works and donate them to the imagined it would be fiction. After she retired Vermont Historical Society. “That’s really valuable historical material,” she in 2005, Allen started her own business, Senior Companion Services, which offered assistance and says. “But that’s for when I’m feeling better.” Allen says she has to look ahead. company to the elderly. And that’s how, in 2008, “I try not to think about it a whole lot,” she says she met Charlie Irish and finally found a subject of her illness. “I’m most dismayed by watching my for her book. Irish, who was in his nineties when he died in family and husband go through all of this … but I’m 2009, worked his way up from VTC clerk in 1941 not afraid of dying. “No matter what,” she adds, “I’m leaving a story to president in 1975. When Allen visited him at Shelburne Bay Senior Living, Irish regaled her that had to be told.” m with stories about the bus company — its history, its colorful staff and its simple, homegrown The People Will Be Served: A History of the business philosophy: “The people will be served.” Vermont Transit Bus Company by Sylvia Nichols Allen, an Enosburg Falls native with family Allen is available online through Amazon and locally at Barnes & Noble in South Burlington, Phoenix still in the area, rode VTC buses from Burlington Books in Essex and Northshire Bookstore in to Clemson University in South Carolina during Manchester Center. $14.95. her freshman year of college, so she had firsthand
I feel like I’ve done a service
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and contributed something important to society and Vermont history.
BOOKS Ticket to Ride, Vermont-Style In her book The People Will Be Served: A History of the Vermont Transit Bus Company, Essex author Sylvia Nichols Allen has made her legacy the much-deserved preservation of another one. Despite the textbook tone, which Allen says she used for historical purposes, The People Will Be Served evenly mixes information and anecdote, relying heavily on the latter via the stories of the late Charlie Irish, former Vermont Transit president, whom Allen befriended in 2008. The author dedicates the book to Irish and storyteller Ken Bessette Sr., a longtime Vermont Transit employee. Lively excerpts from Bessette’s decades of personal writings about the company color the last chapter. In the first two-thirds of The People Will Be Served, Allen thoroughly lays out the history of the bus company, from its beginnings with strict businessman and founder William Appleyard through its 2008 sale to Greyhound, which ushered in unionization, corporate mentality and, ultimately, the demise of Vermont Transit, in Allen’s view. She peppers the book with fascinating historical photos and memorabilia, including decades-old Vermont Transit ads, route schedules and maps. “Vermont Transit started as a company that was a family, where the employees were always treated fairly, and everyone was thinking about the customer first,” Allen says. “That doesn’t happen today. It stopped happening at Vermont Transit, and Vermont Transit is no more.”