Natalie Grove
“I love to drive – I always have,” says Russ Hurst.
Hurst, 66, of Sweet Home, is racking up the miles driving for the Linn Shuttle of Sweet Home, and Senior Center officials say he’s in high demand as a driver on senior excursion trips.
“He’ll absolutely do anything for you,” said Senior Center Activities Director Monica Hoffman, noting that the seniors appreciate Hurst’s consideration and attention to detail as a driver.
“He’s here early and washes the bus before our trip. He makes sure everything’s cleaned out. He goes beyond the call of duty every time.
“He’s courteous as a bus driver. He always goes out of his way to make sure everyone has a good time.”
Hurst started driving buses in 2009 – a year after retiring from 33 years of working for Pacific Power.
“I needed to be doing something productive,” he said.
He got his commercial driving license, and applied for a “Dial-a-Bus” job in Lebanon. Though he didn’t get the job (that 800 other people applied for), he made contact with the driver who got that job and she referred him to East Linn Christian Academy. Hurst began driving school buses for ELCA, as well as for the Sweet Home School District.
“The Senior Center was just across the street from the high school (bus yard), so I walked over there and asked if they needed a relief driver too. They said, ‘Yeah, we could use a relief driver.’”
For a while he drove buses for all three, but in the end he went with the Linn Shuttle.
“It was more convenient. I like the older people and taking them on tours.”
The Linn Shuttle has three routes, all of which Hurst sometimes drives – for Sunshine Industries and Willamette Valley Rehabilitation, for Dial-a-Bus and for the shuttle bus that transports passengers, many of them Linn-Benton Community College. The shuttle to Albany carries thousands of riders a month.
Then there are the senior tours, held about once a month.
“We have a fun time,” Hurst said.
Past destinations have included the Portland Zoo, the Scandinavian Festival, the Portland Rose Garden, the Oregon Gardens, the carousel in Albany, the Iris Gardens, the Evergreen Air Museum in McMinnville, a few trips to the Oregon Coast and, last week, Clear Lake.
“I really enjoy driving seniors around,” Hurst said, adding that there’s a “night-and-day difference” between driving youngsters and adults.
He was born in Encino, Calif., and moved with his family to Lebanon when he was 6.
Hurst’s father was from Portland, but his mother, Martha, now 90, has had family in the Lebanon area since 1860. Hurst’s uncle, along with his own children, lives on the family farm beside the river in Lebanon. Hurst’s four brothers and four sisters are all still on the West Coast – one in Portland, one in Newburg, one in Los Angeles, and the rest in Lebanon.
He graduated from Lebanon High School and then from Bob Jones University.
In 1964, he met Beverly Tyler at a Crowfoot Church youth event.
In the summers he worked as a choker setter in Alaska for Bev’s uncles, and for G&H Logging in Sweet Home.
Following graduation from Bob Jones in 1970, he spent six years in the National Guard.
He and Bev were married and moved to Sweet Home in 1972, where their son Brent and daughter Becky were born.
In 1974, Hurst started an effort to unite the youth groups of Crowfoot Church in Lebanon and Elm Street Baptist Church in Sweet Home. In the process he became the youth director at Elm Street, per the request of then-Pastor Howard Libby.
“We’ve been members of Elm Street Baptist church for 40 some years. It’s been an important part of our lives.” When they first came, Beverly’s parents, Sam and Pat Tyler, were already in attendance.
“He was a well-respected Christian logger in the logging community,” Hurst said of his father-in-law.
The Hursts have 11 grandchildren.
“We all go to church together – it’s a real blessing to have your kids with you in church.”
Before his second career as a bus driver, Hurst worked for Pacific Power, starting as a meter reader in Sweet Home. That experience has come in handy when he drives the Dial-a-Bus, he said.
“When I talk to people and ask them where they live, I can tell them where the meter is on their house.”
After meter-reading, Hurst worked in the power company’s warehouse for a year and a half, then as an estimator for 30 years, figuring costs and materials, doing paperwork, working with customers, and then providing all that information to crews for building power lines.
Those years of experience in east Linn County pay off regularly for the seniors, Hoffman said.
“He knows all the back roads on our trips. That’s probably one of the best things. He takes us on wild rides in the country where even locals who have been here forever don’t know where they are any more.”
A recent example, she said, was when Hurst took the seniors on an unscheduled stop at a small bakery in Peoria that is only open Fridays and Saturdays.
“We got there on a Friday and everybody kind of bought things up.”
Hoffman said trips north, especially, are always varied.
“Every time we go to the Salem area he takes a back road,” she said. “We get to see something new, even if we’re going in the same direction. One time, coming back from a trip up north, he just stopped at Grandpa’s farm (northwest of Lebanon) and everybody got to get out there and buy some produce.”
Hoffman said Hurst also is ever-ready to help seniors in need.
“He just goes out of his way to do anything for anybody. People come in, they have problems. He’s quick to say, “I’ll just go out there with my tractor and level out those rocks’ or something.”
Hurst attributes his skills behind the wheel to his high school driving teacher, who taught him to be considerate of the passengers and make the drive comfortable. The teacher would place a pop bottle in the back of the car and see how long the students could drive and keep it from falling over.
“The seniors really appreciate a comfortable ride,” Hurst said. “They don’t like getting bounced and thrown around the bus.”
“It’s a challenge to me to make the ride as comfortable as I can so they want to go again.”
When he isn’t driving buses, Hurst enjoys driving his collection of Model A’s. He currently owns a 1931 Model A four-door sedan, and a 1930 Model A pickup.
As a member of the “Enduring A’s,” a club in Albany, Hurst participates with other members from Sweet Home, Lebanon, Corvallis, and Albany on tours and get-togethers.
Recently about a dozen of them took a tour up to the Oregon Gardens and had a picnic.
“It’s just a lot of fun.”
Hurst said he was named after his grandfather, Russell Rose Hurst, who lived to 106.
“I’ve got a ways to go if I’m going to match him.”
When he was younger, Hurst would hunt, bale hay and farm with his grandfather.
Today, in Sweet Home, Hurst does a little farming himself. He and Bev have 10 acres, a few cows and a milk cow.
“We play at farming” he said. “We have a lot of fun with it. It’s in my blood.”