Courtesy Miss Patty
Many employees of school systems leave behind important memories with their students, but for bus driver Patty Reitz, she principally leaves behind a memory of friendship, and warm ears.
Known as Miss Patty, the Clarence Central School District bus driver has crocheted 7,083 hats over three decades of service for the students and the school.
Her career included years working in the elementary school’s cafeteria, but she began crocheting in 2005 to pass the time while caring for her mother while she was in the hospital.
“I needed something to do,” she said. Later she took it up while waiting for the students to board her bus.
Back on her first attempt at a hat, a high schooler started it all when he noticed what she was doing.
“The one boy gets on the bus, and he goes ‘what are you doing?’ I said I’m making a hat. He said ‘that would be great going down ski slopes at Holiday Valley.’ So I said what color would you like? That started everything,” Reitz told the local NBC affiliate.
Her specialties are either an elf hat with pompom or a sort of potato sack-shaped affair with tassels on the corners.
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She uses colored yarn and buys it all herself, though she regularly receives gift cards and other presents, certainly around Christmas time.
“She cares. She cares about her students,” said third-grade teacher Deborah Bosworth. “Any student that I’ve had that has been on Miss Patty’s bus gets a hat, and they also get a friend. Miss Patty is one of the favorites.”
Despite the tremendous amount of work that she’s already done, Reitz says she has no plans to stop with her hat-making. The bus driver said she’s already getting organized for next year’s bus riders.
“I’m going to do it until I can’t do it anymore,” she said.
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