Think about what it would be like to have a job where you’re responsible for up to 80 children in an 8-by-40 foot area, then having to turn your back on them, pay attention to traffic and keep to a tight time schedule. Such is the work of a school bus driver.

On the last day of the school year, Pastor Cal White of Redeemer United Methodist Church in Kingston retired from his job as a bus driver with the North Kitsap School District to become full-time pastor of the church.

Church members, led by the Sunshine Ladies group, celebrated his retirement with other bus drivers at a retirement roast and potluck June 25 at Betty Tarbill’s home on Apple Tree Point.

For 13 years, White has driven buses, the last seven of them on route #47 through Eglon, Hansville and Little Boston, taking elementary and junior high students to school. He figures he’s driven the buses a total of about 200,000 miles.

“I’ve enjoyed the kids most days, having had the same kids for seven years,” White reminisced. “It’s made it very pleasant. They’re the cream of the crop.”

He got a surprise his last day on the job June 21 when a substitute driver showed up to do the driving so White could walk up and down the bus to visit with kids.

“I’ll miss the camaraderie of other drivers. We share a common cause,” he said.

There are about 65 drivers with NKSD. White has served as president for the bus drivers’ union of the Washington Education Association. He’s also been a member of the Reading Corps at Wolfe Elementary for six years and will continue next year, an activity he “enjoyed immensely.”

“A pastor has to like people or they’re not going to make it – this dovetails into bus driving,” he said.

Being a pastor came in handy more than once for other bus drivers who were getting married and asked him preside over the weddings.

Driving a school bus is difficult for those making a living at it, he observed, noting that drivers have to be away from home 12 hours to get paid eight when taking in additional kindergarten and activity runs. He’s happy with changes he’s seen over the years with taxpayers responding well to school transportation and supporting safer and cleaner running buses.

While driving buses out the Hansville Highway, his dream of a church ministry in North Kitsap that began 12 years ago continued While serving at the Silverdale Methodist Church, North End families expressed interested in getting a United Methodist Church started and a congregation of 14, led by White, began meeting in the Wolfle Elementary multi-purpose room where they stayed for over 10 years until the new Redeemer United Methodist church opened in September 2002 at the corner of Parcell and Shorty Campbell roads. By then the congregation had grown to about 70 and has more than doubled since moving into the new church, up to about 135.

“The congregation has grown numerically and financially to the point that they need a full-time pastor,” White said.

Prior to coming to Kingston, White had lived in the Silverdale area for nine years. In the early 1970s, he was a missionary in Central and South America, spending four years in Ecuador and a year in Guatemala. He has theology degrees from Northwest University in Kirkland and Claremont School of Theology in California

He now lives in Paradise Bay, just across the Hood Canal Bridge, but it’s a shorter commute, he noted, than those who live in Hansville. He hopes to have more time for his family, including wife Linda, after years of hectic days driving buses in the early mornings and late afternoons, being at the church between 9 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., and back at the church for evening meetings.

Sometimes he’d have his creative juices flowing, he said, and in the middle of writing a sermon would have to head back over to the bus barn.

His son Brian is grown now living in East Bremerton. White has several of his son’s home run baseballs displayed in his church office. His bilingual daughter Josette is vice principal of an elementary school in Pasco. He also has four grown step-children.

One of Pastor Cal’s biggest fans is Jacque Thornton who remarked on his dedication in forming a church and then getting a new church built. “One has to have been there from the beginning to realize all the steps, prayers and sacrifices to fulfill this vision. He filled us with enthusiasm, faith and dedication to also see this vision.”

Thornton, co-founder and current secretary of the Sunshine Ladies, enthused “We stuck together and jumped every hurdle, some two or three times, but he was the first one to jump, leading the rest of us.”

White is looking forward to future growth of the church. The second phase of construction will include a two-story education wing and gymnasium, and in the third phase, an auditorium. He hopes to get a cascading waterfall installed on the hillside that’s seen through the glass behind the altar to memorialize members of the congregation who have died.

Having more time during the day will also allow him to visit church members at their homes or at the hospital when ill.

“I want to let them know who I am outside the pulpit,” he said.

White did admit he signed up to be a substitute bus driver next year. He’s not ready to give up driving buses entirely quite yet.