LEARNING MADE FUN WITH “MISS ESTELLA’S BRILLIANT BUS”
By: Hope Wilkos, Writer/Blogger Photographer: George Whylie Videographer: Maxine NolanRetirement may seem so sweet but for for one hard-working lady, retirement means giving unto others for the sake of achievement and the reward of love.
Estella Pyfrom is 76 years old with an enormous heart and vivacious energy to match. She is the daughter of migrant workers who didn’t have a whole lot of education but worked hard to provide as best they could for the family of six children. She learned at an early age that the key to a successful life was education. There is nothing that can ever make up for a good education. Estella made her parents, especially her dad, very proud. She received her Master’s Degree and taught in the Palm Beach County School District in Florida for 50 years.
Retiring really didn’t seem to be in the cards for Estella but her husband, Willie, fell very ill five years ago. He was hospitalized for an extended period of time as he underwent three surgeries and 26 blood infusions. As long as he remained in intensive care, Estella never left his side. Perhaps that became a turning point or a life-changing sign and shortly thereafter, she decided to retire, but after so many years of the rewarding job of educating children, she was not totally ready to give up the passion she had felt so satisfied by for all these years. She brings out the best in people and that in itself is a blessing not to be taken too lightly.
Today, Palm Beach County is lucky enough to have “Miss Estella’s Brilliant Bus”. With their income from the school district, a few good investments and a couple of side jobs, the Pyfroms built their retirement. Using their nest egg, they bought a bus as large as a greyhound bus and installed 17 computer stations along with a generator to allow the bus to run for hours when it sits parked at a school or community center. The total cost was $450,000 but with the extensive modifications and expenses to keep it going daily, the total is rising to $900,000. The side of the bus reads, “We bring learning to you”.
Estella and her volunteer helper and driver, Patrick Morris, take the bus from school to school and community centers in between. All the children who sometimes slip through the cracks in the system get the most benefit out of her generosity and driven dedication to students and education. She wants nothing more than to help children succeed, become educated and enjoy the learning process. The mission statement of this magical bus is to eliminate the dead ends such as lack of access to the internet which is something we all take for granted these days or difficulty in learning to read. Her persistence is paying off as the children are excited to work on the computers and increase their skills and their test scores are showing that. The computers are loaded with educational software which measures progress, links up with state-mandated curriculum material, gets the kids prepared for FCAT testing and tracks their progress against their own scores and those of students around the state.
In one week, Estella will go from Riviera Beach to Lake Worth to West Palm Beach to Pahokee (north, west, east, central and south parts of county) and she targets kindergartners all the way up to high school seniors. The bus is on the road three to four days per week and even weekends if needed. Over a full year, 8,000 hours of instruction is given to 500 children of which 317 are in Pahokee, an area in need of economic revival and where the bus is in use once a week targeting third, fourth and fifth-graders. The bus also has a summer camp program.
In addition, Estella offers tutoring services and social services to engage the children most in need.
The students love the bus and love Mrs. Pyfrom. She treats every child as if they were her own and many would much rather learn on the bus instead of in the classroom. Estella gives them brochures from ComCast to take to their parents as a suggestion to keep the learning process going. Affordable $9.95-a-month Internet plans, a $149 computer and free internet training is all available to families of children eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches.
Estella is constantly busy giving the kids moral support, coaching, praising and making sure they achieve 90% proficiency. The results are a shining example of how much this “Brilliant Bus” is paying off.
Estella Pyfrom has four guiding principles in her life; love, faith, family and religion. She and her husband fell in love as teenagers and have been together ever since. The bond of family is strong with 11 grandchildren to be proud of. There is so much to the goodness that exudes from Estella. She and her husband have run group homes on the side and began a food program that now feeds 3,000 people a month. At one point, she sold insurance and worked on numerous community boards for the disadvantaged and disabled. She was a guardian ad litem and a court-certified mediator. Now the Pyfroms still run that food pantry. Estella gets just four hours of sleep per night and is up and about early so that she can tend to necessary paperwork before beginning her day. You will never hear one complaint out of Estella.
Estella Pyfrom exemplifies the joy of generosity and giving. Who knew that retirement could be this rewarding? Although “Miss Estella’s Brilliant Bus” is beginning to be discovered nationwide by Brian Williams and Kerry Sanders on “NBC Nightly News” and even Anderson Cooper of CNN, fame and fortune will never stop Estella from spreading love and knowledge to children of all ages. Spreading education is crucial for future generations.
If you are interested in donating to this fulfilling cause, go to www.brilliantbus.org.
PHOTO CREDITS: D. Gwen Berry/The Palm Beach Post, “Miss Estella’s Brilliant Bus” Facebook Page
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