ZEPHYR COVE, Nev. – Janet Simone starts the coffee pot at 2:00 a.m. to spend time with her husband before he heads to work at 5 a.m., but that’s all about to change.

Their morning quality time will soon get pushed back. “Later, much later,” Janet says, “Even six o’clock I’d be happy with. Five is sleeping in.”

“That’s our time…” Janet says, it’s a moment between the two of them each morning, drinking coffee and reading the bible, before David Simone leaves for his school bus route, picking kids up for George Whittell High School and Zephyr Cove Elementary School.

---

---

On the last day of school this year, coming up on June 14, Simone will make his final stop. The school bus driver is retiring.

His wife says rain or shine, her husband has been getting kids to school and back home for the last 30 years. The route has stops in Glenbrook, Skyland, the Highway 50 estates and all the way to the Kahle Drive community.

---

---

“It’s a big route,” his wife says, “A lot of people think it’s easy, but when you’re stopping on the highway, it’s very dangerous.”

He does the morning route, then picks up pre-K students around noon and rounds off the day by driving kids back home. It doesn’t stop there. For the field trips all over the state—from Las Vegas to the Northern Nevada border beyond Elko—”he’s been there,” Janet says.

“He is just a fixture in our Tahoe facility,” Leslie Benson says, secretary for the Douglas County School District transportation center in Minden, “He is literally the glue that holds that place together up here.”

Vice Principal for the Lake Schools, Jim Pace, says “I’m pretty new up here, but he’s a legend. It’s all I heard about when I took over, Dave the bus driver. Everybody knows Dave.”

Pace says David is known for his longevity, and dependability. “He’s going to be very difficult to replace,” and he says, “I don’t know if we will ever fill his shoes.”

He is the last local to Tahoe bus driver for Douglas County’s Lake Schools. Other bus drivers commute from the valley. “It gives him an advantage,” Benson says, “because he knows the area inside and out.”

That’s priceless given the winter conditions the area sees, “Just having somebody that you know is going to deliver,” Pace says, “regardless of the conditions or circumstances.”

The ins-and-outs of the roads aren’t the only thing he’s memorized. Those who used to be parents, are now grandparents. The faces of kids he once drove to school, are now the faces of parents seeing their kids to the bus stop. “He grew them through the school system” his wife says.

His wife also used to be a school bus driver for the region and says you would see the community at bus stops.

“Three generations is a lot of people you meet and you get close to them,” she says.

“You develop that relationship over time,” Pace explains, “He’s like another parent to some of them.”

Janet has already retired from the school district, and is looking forward to their future together.

“I feel we’ve accomplished a lot of our goals,” she says, “We’ve got to find some new ones.”

She already has a few on her list, “Hit the beach, hit the woods, and hit the gym.”

The couple used to create wood burl art and plans on doing that again.

Concerts are also in the plans, but that’s nothing new. He’s known at the school district as the rock-n-roll superstar since he’s often seen wearing a concert t-shirt.

The couple is about to celebrate their 40th anniversary together. Concert going and dancing in Stateline were a big part of those 40 years after David asked Janet to a game of chess where she almost beat him. “I think I woke him,” Janet remembers, “because I was close to beating him.”

Janet is excited to explore their future together as a retired couple, starting June 15.

“We are best friends,” she says.