Danger of driving a T bus can bring a good man down

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

He isn't allowed to talk to the press. The rules forbid it and if he breaks the rules he will lose his job and then where will he be?

But where will he be if he holds his tongue and keeps his job and nothing changes? Will he end updead one night, murdered by one of the punks who murder him now in small ways, who hurl insults at him, who threaten him, spit at him, drop garbage in his lap and sucker-punch him for the thrill of it?

Will he end up hostile and bitter, a man who's had the good kicked out of him, a man so used to people bullying and cheating that he ends up believing all people are bullies and cheats?

That's what his wife wants to know. What's going to happen to my husband? They're killing him, little by little, she says. He's changed. He used to be happy. Now he's not.

Now he's miserable and tense and angry and sad and there's nothing either he or she can do about it.

"When my husband was picked out of a lottery to join the MBTA, we thought we were the luckiest people in the world," she writes in a letter she says she shouldn't have written because her husband doesn't know about it, doesn't know about her fears and her worry and her frustrations. She doesn't want to burden him because he has enough worries of his own.

But she writes about him because she is terrified - for him, for herself and for her family.

"My husband has always been a hard worker but the benefits were never there. When he got picked for the MBTA, we thought, great. A good steady job with good benefits and a chance for advancement without a college education.

"Little did we know that he would be getting on average $3 an hour during his training period, and that we were going to have to pay our own medical insurance and medical expenses for four years. We did not know that he would be working a split shift - 30 hours a week for four years.

"Then finally, the big day came. My husband was asked to go on full time."

What he had waited for was finally to be.

But he was assigned the night shift in an area of the city where most people don't even dare to go out at night.

"In the course of a daily routine, he has been verbally abused, threatened, has had debris thrown at him and has feared for his life. How long does a person have to endure this kind of treatment? Will a bus operator have to be killed before any changes are made? We are talking about people, men and women who are just trying to earn a day's pay. I have watched my husband change in the past year because of what he has had to deal with and it makes me sick to see.

"You would never think that when your husband went off to work to drive a bus that you would have to worry about whether he is going to come home alive. I should have married a policeman because at least they have a gun to protect themselves."

Every night, there are kids ("But they are closer to being men than they are kids") who ride the bus and, when it's time to pay, refuse and walk off. Sometimes the police are called and then they pay. But they pay back the driver, too, after the police are gone, with curses and threats and kicks and punches that shatter more than bone, that crush a trusting spirit.

"My husband's broken bones will heal but his fears and disappointment will always be part of our lives until changes are made. For this isn't just his story. This is the story of so many men and women out there every day, driving buses, dealing with the public. Every time they ask for a fare, they risk their lives. Every time they drive certain routes, they are in danger.

"I want the public to know this. I want the public to think about this, whenever the bus is late, whenever the driver is less than friendly, whenever they're putting down the MBTA. I want them to remember people like my husband, hard-working good people who risk their lives just trying to do their job, just trying to make a living."