Single mom and dutiful school bus driver, Donna Peters, is a ‘Special Person’

Jun 10, 2018 Features / Columnists, News, Special Person

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 “Educate yourself or acquire a skill, to make yourself marketable, so that you could become an independent person. That way anything that comes your way you could deal with it.”

By Enid Joaquin

Single parenting for many women can be one of the most daunting tasks – not to mention financially challenging. However, for 54-year-old Donna Peters, who had fully harnessed several self supporting skills early in life, it was a mission for which she was fully prepared.
Perhaps it was a premonition, or just good old, women’s intuition, that had warned her that one day she would have to take care of her children on her own…or maybe it was just her independent spirit. Whichever one it was, that, in addition to her bulldog tenacity and “take the bull by the horns” attitude, has certainly catapulted her into being, perhaps, one of the more independent single parents in the town of Linden.
Donna Peters is the owner of three buses – two 30-seaters and a 15-seater. These she uses to ply her trade – transporting school children to and from school on a daily basis.

Peters is ably assisted by one of her daughters, who is a nurse by profession. Her daughter assists in shuttling the children to school in the mornings, before she heads to work at the Linden Hospital.
Clearly, all those years watching her mother working tirelessly, to take care of her and her two siblings, has made an indelible impression on her. So now, she is following in Mama’s footsteps!
But let me tell you a little bit about Donna Peters.
Standing maybe just slightly over five feet, what this woman lacks in stature, she more than makes up for in the huge impact and contribution that she has been making to the Linden community. Because of her, many parents can rest assured that their children would be taken to school safely and on time every day, and then taken back home in the afternoons, with the same clockwork precision.
Donna has mastered the art of taking care of the transportation needs of other people’s children, having done so dutifully over the past twenty years, even as she has simultaneously taken care of her own children, as a single parent, for over a decade.
Donna Peters did not go to Secondary School, but attended Riley’s Commercial School in Retrieve, where she learnt shorthand and typing up to the advanced level. These skills would later enable her to land a job at Twiga Construction Company as a typist.

It was while there that she met her husband. After getting married, she soon became pregnant at 23, with her first child, a boy.
Two girls would follow, and given the circumstances, Donna was forced to quit her job to take care of the children. But she reflects that she could never just remain at home.
“I used to do a lot of things – buy and sell greens, make black pudding, white pudding and channa on the weekends and a whole lot of stuff…I was always on the go, supplementing whatever income my husband was making as a mechanic.”
Her husband later started to transport four children to the Watooka Day School with the family car. Donna would soon become involved in the business, after the number of children requiring the service grew. Using another car, she would also transport the students.

TAKING CONTROL
But things would reach a point where Donna was forced to take control of the business.
“We had started out with two cars which we used to transport children from Amelia’s Ward to Watooka Day School.
But then, the business grew and we had to purchase a bus, and the business continued to grow, but by then my husband was getting wayward. One morning, when he wasn’t getting up to go and pick the children up, I asked him what was going on, and he said to me,”I gon’ show these people who is me this morning!”
That day Donna took the children to school on her own.
For her, it was a new beginning, where she would continue the business without her husband’s assistance. Things did not get better between them, she confessed. These irreconcilable differences, soon led to their divorce in 2005.

However, even as her marriage was falling apart, the business continued to grow from strength to strength, as the demand for the service had grown phenomenally.
“I soon had to buy another bus, because by now, I was transporting children not only to Watooka Day School, but to almost all the other schools on the Mackenzie shore.
She later bought two more buses to serve the ever-growing number of children needing to get to school. Her success as a businesswoman is testimony to her hard work, commitment and discipline in anything she undertakes.
A born Lindener, who grew up in Whittaker Road (Daggerad Avenue), Mackenzie, Donna Roxanne Peters was born in 1964 to Donald and Rita Peters at the Mackenzie Hospital.
She is the fourth of nine children for her parents.
She attended Teacher Esther’s Kindergarten and the Mackenzie Primary School.
Donna still remembers walking with her siblings from Amelia’s Ward to Mackenzie Primary, in the mornings and then back home in the afternoons. Later, she was enrolled at Amelia’s Ward Primary, where one of her teachers was former Magistrate Juliet Holder Allen.
Donna currently lives in Central Amelia’s Ward, with one of her three children.
Regarding her life as a single parent, she reflected,
“I have taken care of my three children comfortably with a grateful heart. As a single parent, you have to take time to talk with your children, know what is going on with them. If you’re too tired after work, wake them up early in the mornings and talk with them, find out if anything is bothering them. Always keep the lines of communication open with your children.”
She further advises young women, “First of all, develop a relationship with God, and of course educate yourself or acquire a skill, to make yourself marketable, so that you could become an independent person. That way anything that comes your way you could deal with it…and especially, should you become a single parent, you would have the requisite knowledge and skills to take care of your children”.
Profound words of wisdom from a remarkable woman that has successfully taken care of her three children as a single parent, while managing a flourishing and truly important transportation business for over twenty years. Indeed, this is a special person!

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