Perspective:
One Woman's Heartbreak Spurs Activism

Nancy Stauffer will forever relive the moment she received the phone call from her husband the afternoon of Sept. 23, 2004.

She was preparing to conclude her work day when new husband Leonard called with heart-stopping news: 13-year-old daughter Airiel was being airlifted to a hospital in Wichita, Kan., about 40 miles to the southeast of their Hutchinson home, after being involved in a serious school bus accident.

"I just grabbed my stuff and ran to my van," she recalled. "I didn't say a word to anyone."

She grew increasingly frustrated during the drive home, not only as her mind raced through the many possibilities but also because the road she chose was closed, forcing her on a time-consuming detour around town. Her nephew, meanwhile, heard about the accident on the local news and immediately called her cell phone. When Stauffer picked up she was hysterical.

"He told me, 'Nancy you've got to settle down and come pick me up so I can drive you,'" she recalled.

When she finally arrived home to meet Leonard, the couple headed to the hospital first stopping at Airiel's school to pick up her backpack, which emergency responders retrieved from the school bus. Adding to her frustration, officials there had little information to share.

Earlier that afternoon 69-year-old Phyllis Bontrager, a school bus driver for USD 312, was taking Yoder Charter Elementary School students home when she came upon Kansas Highway 96. As she traveled northbound along McNew Road a little before 4 p.m., she attempted to cross the four-lane highway separated by a grass median, according to a Kansas Highway Patrol accident investigation. As Bontrager crossed the westbound lanes, a 1999 Peterbuilt semi, driven by 24-year-old Ricky Carr of Crossville, Tenn., slammed into the center of the 1990 Chevrolet school bus chassis. Witnesses said that Bontrager did not yield to oncoming traffic, leaving Carr little time to brake. Bontrager later told investigators she did not think the semi was traveling as fast as it was. Carr said he first thought the bus was coming to a complete stop to allow his truck to pass. Then he thought it was going to turn left onto the highway in the lane beside him. Instead Bontrager drove onto the highway traveling northbound along McNew Road and into the path of the oncoming semi, which T-boned the bus. The impact caused the bus to spin before landing upright in a nearby ditch, ejecting Turner, facts which Nancy Leonard would not hear until hours later with their daughter clinging to life support with massive head injuries.

Doctors would not let Nancy see her daughter until approximately 11:30 that evening.

"She had a lot of road rash, a broken collarbone and her arm was in a sling; she was on a respirator," she said. " I just still didn't believe she was going to die. I told her, 'We're going to make it through this.' I sang to her, and I told her we were going to go to Disneyland ."

Airiel never made it to the Happiest Place on Earth. Doctors later successfully removed a piece of her broken skull that was intruding on her brain but they were unable to alleviate the massive swelling. She died two days later. Another child made a full recovery, but two others, siblings Glendon and Mindy Bontrager, suffered life-altering injuries. Glendon is paralyzed from the chest down, and Mindy suffered brain damage and is currently a special needs student.

"My daughter had expressed to me the previous school year that she was scared to death of riding that school bus," Nancy said, who lost her first husband about a year earlier to complications from diabetes - Airiel was at home when her father died and called Nancy at work to inform her. "They had hit a slick place in the road and almost went off the road. It never crossed my mind that they didn't have seat belts. I wish I had paid attention."

Following Airiel's death Stauffer collected 1,000 signatures on a petition to equip school buses with seat belts. Rep. Mark Treaster soon called. The result was HB 2546. Despite Stauffer's heart-wrenching testimony before a House Committee in favor of the bill that would require 3-point lap/shoulder belts on school buses, Larry Bluthardt, the state's director of pupil transportation, said the bill never made it out of the Senate.

Treaster said he would re-evaluate the bill at a later date, but added he first had to secure re-election. But there's no quit in Stauffer.

"Had (Airiel) had a seat belt on, she would not have been ejected," she said. "I don't know what to say to them to get them to understand that, yes, the compartmentalization is great for the bus, but the children inside were thrown around."

Source: School Transportation News, May 2006. All rights reserved.