Patricia Pfeiffer Edwards

LHS '66

? - October 15, 2024

Patricia Edwards, 76, of Huntsville died October 15, 2024, after a very brief illness.

She leaves behind family and many sweet friends who mourn her unexpected loss and miss her: son, Shane Edwards (Trisha); granddaughters, McKenzie Blackhart (Kevin) and Briana Williams (Parker); great-granddaughter; Tulsi; brother Brian Pfeiffer (Joy); sister, Michele Farr (John); niece, Dari Pfeiffer; great niece, Xylia; cousin, Ellen DaVino (Jerry); and several extended Edwards family members, including nieces and nephews.

Patricia retired from the Marshall Space Flight Center (Sensors group) in 2014 and was enjoying retirement. She especially enjoyed her church activities and church family at Central Seventh day Adventist church and found great joy and peace in coming to know God, His amazing grace, and His promises.

Plans for a memorial service are pending at this time.

Prayers for her family are appreciated, and any donations in her memory may be made to Big Cove Christian Academy (www.bigcovechristianacademy.org) or The Boot Campaign (https://bootcampaign.org).

Bus Memories

Tommy Towery

LHS '64

Dianne Hughey McClure, LHS ‘64, "I rode the bus a lot when I was young. My grandmother lived on Charity Lane and came to Huntsville on a regular basis. We would ride the bus downtown from my house. Sometimes we would take the bus to visit different family members. She didn't drive so it was our transportation. When I was a teenager my Dad had a restaurant in downtown Huntsville. I would come home after school then walk about a block and catch the bus to go to his restaurant. Sometimes I would ride it home,sometimes I would wait on him to close the restaurant. I had a friend that lived about two hours from Huntsville and every summer for two or three years I would ride a Greyhound bus there and back to visit her. The bus was a big part of growing up for me. Would still like to ride the bus to places I need to go but busas aren't as available as they once were."

John Scales, LHS ‘66, "The Monte Sano kids rode the bus often. In my first-grade year, Monte Sano was still in the county as was Rison, so we rode a county school bus to Rison and back. Before second grade we were annexed by the city, but no bus was yet available, so we carpooled down to East Clinton. Grade 3 - 5 there was a city (?) bus that wound all around Monte Sano, taking kids to Blossomwood (brand new then), Huntsville Junior High, and Huntsville High. My sixth grade was spent at a brand-new school, Monte Sano Elementary. My seventh-grade year we were sent to Lee Junior High by bus, but this time the bus would just roll down Nolan and Monte Sano Boulevard and stop at corners, so people had to walk from there. This continued as Lee became a high school, and I rode that bus until I was a senior. Then Chris Hoberg and I alternated weeks driving (with two other riders), me driving my father's car as he was in a carpool that went to the Arsenal. Some years later there was a fatal accident on Bankhead Parkway with a student being killed and after that they didn't bus kids that way anymore."

Nancy Davidson Hummel, LHS ‘65, "Here is the bus ride I've never forgotten, Tommy. We moved to Huntsville from Indiana when I was in the 5th grade. We lived on Giles Drive in Oak Park and the city bus stopped at the end of our block. I had never lived in a place where I could ride the bus downtown so riding it was an adventure. I'm sure this happened the very first time Mom let me go downtown by myself. The ride downtown was uneventful. Coming back I was the only passenger on the bus. I thought it would be fun to ride all the way in the back of the bus so I did. I noticed that the bus driver kept looking at me in his rearview mirror. Finally he said something like "Why don't you move closer to the front?" I said no because I wanted to ride in the back. When I got off the bus he said something like "You're new here, aren't you?" or "Where are you from?"

 I didn't know about Jim Crow. Indiana's schools and public accommodations were already integrated at the time. It wasn't until I had been in Huntsville for a while that I realized why that driver had stared so hard at me that day. "

Craig Bannecke. LHS ‘65, "Thinking back on my school bus experience takes me back to Carlisle, Pa. where, in the first grade,  I went to school several miles from my home. I would walk up to the corner from my house and catch the bus. The following three years I went to a different school that just opened about a mile and a half from the house and I walked to school, every day. They had a bus service for us, but my mother having grown up on a farm and my dad in the city, they both walked to school. So, I remember walking on cold Pennsylvania mornings in snow and in misting rain. The only time I rode the bus was in severe weather and my mother would allow that. 

My greatest memory of those three years of walking was in the fall and going through the older neighborhoods that had big trees and big leaf piles. Those poor folks would spend the weekend raking up their leaves and come Monday morning we kids would be kicking and jumping into those leaf piles on our way to school and on the way home as well.  

Then we moved to Huntsville in 1957 as my Dad was civil service and got a promotion to come work at Redstone Arsenal. Huntsville city schools weren't yet keeping up with the new growth of Huntsville and we lived out in Lakewood which at that time was on the edge of town. I and many of my fellow Lee graduates attended Pulaski Pike. That was where I first met Tommy Bush who would become my best friend as a child all the way through High School, growing up,  Others that I can remember were Greg Dixon, Pam Wright and Cindy Powell along with Everett Brulette. Pulaski Pike, was truly a country school and the fourth and fifth grade were in the same class with one teacher, Mrs Shepherd. How, after all these years, I can remember her name is beside me.  

I also remember our getting out of school for a week in October for Cotton Pick'n.  Nonetheless, it was at Pulaski Pike that I rode a school bus for only the second time. I think it picked up every kid in North West Huntsville because we were packed in that bus like Sardines !  There were no seats available when I got on the bus in the morning and I might get a seat halfway home in the afternoon as kids got off the school bus. I can remember the school bus stopping along Mastin Lake Road each morning as it waited for Billy Bob who lived on a dairy farm and had a long, long gravel road to walk or run down to catch the bus.  

At Lee Junior High I rode the bus with a good deal more seating and before long we had a steady group of regulars who always sat in the very back each morning. Skip Cook, Terry Lee, Jim Harris to name a few. Others who rode that bus were SaraJane Steigerwald, Sandra and Sarah Schiff, David Best, Judy Scarborough, Brian Peifffer  and again Greg Dixon and many of those who had been at Pulaski Pike.  We all pretty much rode together from Junior high through our Junior years at Lee. By then we were getting our drivers license and began car pooling. I know I did my entire Senior year.  But the Bus rides were memorable and on them I made many friends of which some I still have even today."

Thomas Provost, LHS '66, "I didn’t hit Huntsville till the 11th grade so no busses for me. The 9th and 10th were spent in Sukiran, Okinawa, and no busses there either !!!

The Wayback Machine

During my days at Lee, if I wanted to go somewhere far away from Huntsville, Trailways Bus service was my mode of transportation. I rode it often to Memphis my final year of high school because my mother had remarried and moved to Memphis and I stayed at my grandmother's house in Huntsville so I could finish out my senior year. 

The longest trip I made by bus was the summer before my arrival at Lee in the ninth grade. I joined a group of Boy Scouts and we took a caravan of three buses to Colorado Springs, Colorado, for the Fifth National Boy Scout Jamboree.

Which of our classmates took the longest bus ride while attending Lee? Let me know your claim.

I could not make it to the Lee Lunch Bunch, but I will try to get some pictures to share for next week's issue. There are some on Facebook.

Last Week's Questions, Answers, And Comments

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