If you have gone on the campus shuttle, then there’s a strong chance you have been greeted by the Hawaiian-shirted bus driver everyone raves about; Mickey McElroy.
Mickey’s backstory
McElroy has been driving the campus loop for longer than he can remember, however this is his third career.
“I was a maintenance manager on the waterfront in Philadelphia… That facility closed so I moved up here where I had a hunting cabin,” McElroy states.
The driver explains that when he moved to Central Pennsylvania, he got bored. This started his story at Bloomsburg. It didn’t start on the shuttle; it started when he enrolled as a non-traditional student at the age of 45. McElroy worked hard to earn a degree in social work, with a minor in communications.
His choice to major in social work came from the appreciation he has for the organization, NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
“My ex-wife was very ill, and I was a family member. I didn’t know anything about mental health stuff. But NAMI was really helpful,” says McElroy, “I got a wealth of information and support from them.”
McElroy goes on to explain that he wanted some way to give back to NAMI for all of the assistance they provided him. This led him to choosing social work as his degree. Everything he did throughout his schooling was mental health based. McElroy then interned with NAMI that was on the Bloomsburg campus at the time.
McElroy then became the Director of Education in NAMI Pennsylvania. He mentioned the work he did through the organization; from bringing a grant to the University’s attention for suicide prevention magnets with Linda Cook to co-developing NAMI Central – Susquehanna Valley. McElroy describes his time working in mental health as incredibly rewarding.
“At the end of my mental health career, I was working with individuals that were diagnosed with mental illness. After what I went through personally, it was rather stressful for me, so I decided it was time to step away.. I was working for almost 40 years at that point,” said McElroy, touching on why he retired.
He came back out of retirement once more, getting a job as a bus driver for the Southern Columbia school district. This time, it was so he could provide insurance for his family when his former wife wanted to go to nursing school. McElroy later decided he didn’t want to keep driving for high school. And so he came back to Bloomsburg University.
Life from behind
the wheel
Driving the campus shuttle impacted McElroy. After his divorce, he didn’t want to sit around and do nothing. So he continued working because of the nature of the job, and because of his love for chatter.
“If I didn’t work here, I’d be retired,” McElroy says.
Mickey is known for his love conversation and his Hawaiian shirts. Both of these things are influenced by the students. When he began wearing the shirts, many students complimented them, saying he should wear them all the time. Since then, the Hawaiian button ups have become his informal uniform.
Most of the time, the students come to him. He can tell when a student is in the mood to talk or not, but regardless he always greets them with a cheery “hello”, and a kind “see-ya”.
“Back when I was working at the high school, they had me watch a bunch of training videos. There was a clip where the guy said ‘when you’re driving the bus, you want to welcome your passengers onto the bus and wish them well when they leave,” McElroy says, “because of the things students are going through, unfortunately that might be the most pleasant conversation they have that day.”
McElroy does what he can to provide students with kindness. In doing so, he’s making his own mark on the Bloomsburg campus.