User:Vaoverland/aboutme
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Personal Information for Wikipedian Vaoverland:
My name is Mark Fisher. I have been living in Virginia almost 50 years, most of that time in the Richmond area.
Currently, I am a semi-retired bus transportation manager, and now live in Grove, a still-rural community in James City County about 7 miles southeast of Colonial Williamsburg, and 3 miles west of Lee Hall. Nearby, the trains loaded with West Virginia bituminous coal still roll east on Collis P. Huntington's former C&O tracks on their way to the coal piers at Newport News.
The Grove Community and nearby Carter's Grove Plantation on the James River are situated on land which was originally part of Martin's Hundred, first settled by English colonists around 1618. We are located in almost the exact geographic center of the Historic Triangle area which consists of Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown, in the Virginia Peninsula sub-region of the Hampton Roads region.
Around here, you cannot go far without coming upon something both historic and interesting. Among my favorite rides, is the bucolic Colonial Parkway, which is nearby and offers beautiful views of wildlife and both the James and York Rivers, as well as the Jamestown Ferry. Both the Colonial Parkway and the Jamestown Ferry are a shunpiker's delight: no tolls or fees. I work on Wikipedia mostly from home, and occasionally, from terminals at our excellent local library.
Thanks, Mark in the Historic Triangle of Virginia.
[edit] Youth, education, activities
I was born in Chicago, Illinois, the railroad capital of the United States during the Korean War. Since I was very small, I've always loved and been fascinated by transportation vehicles, including trains, streetcars, interurbans, trolley-buses, school buses, motorcoaches and all other types of buses, and automobiles.
I am old enough to recall the streetcars and electric trolley-buses in Chicago, the Zephyr streamliner passenger trains and the groups of steam locomotives headed to scrap on the 3 track main line "racetrack" of Burlington Railroad between Aurora and Chicago. The frequent trains passed within a half block of our home in Downers Grove, a western suburb, and former location of a CB&Q roundhouse.
Shortly after relocating to Richmond in the very hot summer of 1958 (when I was 7 years old), our family began driving on weekend trips to some of the many historic sites and I thus became very interested in the history and geography of the Old Dominion. Among just a few of my earlier memories are our visits to such places as Monticello, Jamestown, Lexington, Natural Bridge, and Petersburg National Battlefield Park. At the latter, I can recall some sites which have since been lost to development, although much has been preserved there, and elsewhere in Virginia. Of course, the crown jewel is Colonial Williamsburg where the extensive restoration and recreation of the entire colonial town facilitates envisioning the atmosphere and embracing the ideals of the 17th century patriots, many of whom helped mold the democracy we enjoy in Virginia and the United States.
I attended public schools in Illinois, Kentucky, and Virginia. I believe that phonics training in grades K-1 in Illinois and Kentucky combined with a lot of attention from my Mom (a former school teacher) to help me become a good reader early-on, an activity which I still enjoy a great deal. I was hyperactive and only a mediocre pupil in the Chesterfield County Public Schools after we moved to Virginia. My folks learned keeping me busy helped me stay out of trouble (usually). I loved maps and was often our "official navigator" on family outings and our longer trips to visit relatives in other states. I recall the early construction which seemed to be everywhere as the Interstate Highway System began to replace much of the U.S. Highway system, as well as the inevitable "detours" which added time, miles, and variety to our travels. My Dad was confounded by such disruptions of our carefully laid plans, while my Mom saw each diversion as an adventure. Such contrast was classic in their partnership, a marriage which served them each well for over 50 years.
I was active in my church choir and youth groups and in the Boy Scouts, where I earned the God and Country Award and achieved the rank of Life Scout. During scouting, I first saw submarines and aircraft carriers, touring these and other ships at the massive Naval Station Norfolk at Sewell's Point on Hampton Roads. During such trips, I got to see the wonder of the then-new Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, first of this design, which was almost as fascinating to me as the Navy base.
As soon as I was old enough, I became a bicycle newspaper carrier for the former afternoon Richmond Newsleader, where I won a number of sales awards and was named "Newspaperboy of the Year" in 1965. At 16, with my savings and some funds from my grandmother, I bought my first car, and I took on a massive suburban motor route as a newspaper carrier for the morning Richmond Times-Dispatch, rising each morning at 3 AM to face a mountain of newspaper bundles and miles of driving before school, where I was then known to fall asleep at times. As I delivered the news, I usually listened to WRVA, our clear channel AM station. While listening to the all-night Lou Dean Show, I recall first learning the of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King and the riots which followed, closely followed by the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy during that terrible spring of 1968. A happier memory is that I also became licensed as a school bus driver at age 16 in April that year.
I participated in Junior Achievement and was a Distributive Education (DE) student during my senior year at Huguenot High School (1968-69). At that time, a DE student worked a job which is coordinated with school. Mine was working with a small independent (private) school helping manage a small fleet of automobiles, minibuses and school buses, which as it turned out, began my career path with buses.
[edit] Career: bus operations, dealerships, ground transportation
My career has been mostly in bus transportation, and I enjoy almost anything bus-related. I started driving a school bus at age 16 while in high school, and for two local public school divisions during the following two years while attending community college.
While still a school bus driver for Richmond City Public Schools (RPS), I was professionally trained in bus routing logistics by a team of professional transit consultants hired by the school system to develop a new busing system. As the new plan was implemented in the fall of 1971, I was in the right place at the right time, so to speak, and became a full-time staff member in pupil transportation, the youngest in Virginia at age 20. I stayed with the Richmond school system for 4 more years, first as an area field bus supervisor for two years and then as promoted to coordinating city-wide daily bus operations from the central office for 2 more years until jumping from the school system to the private-sector full-time in the fall of 1975.
Before and since working for RPS, I have experienced a variety of part-time and volunteer work with broadcasting, advertising, and sales as well as driving and dispatching wreckers, taxicabs, EMS ambulance service, and nursing home and paratransit and wheelchair transport services.
[edit] Virginia Overland Transportation
My user name Vaoverland derives from Virginia Overland Transportation, a now-defunct bus company based in Richmond, Virginia of which I was a part-owner and was employed in management for 30 years (1973-2004).
My parents and I began the business which became Virginia Overland in 1973 as a strictly part-time endeavor, doing school transportation consulting and management work for several small, independent schools and delivering new school buses from Indiana to Virginia for a bus body dealer. However, our business grew, and during 1975 and 1976, turned into a small bus operating company and dealership. Within 10 years, we had grown to be the second largest school bus contractor in Virginia and were handling franchises for new bus sales and products for four national manufacturers.
In the bus services area, with a remarkable team of bus enthusiasts as employees over the years, beginning from 1976 to 1988, my parents and I acquired a number of older small public service companies, some with roots in interurban streetcar operations in the early 20th century in the Richmond-Petersburg region of Virginia. We operated school buses, transit buses, and motorcoaches with primarily school transportation operations (elementary, secondary and university) in Richmond, Petersburg, and Hopewell in Central Virginia, Hampton and Newport News on the Virginia Peninsula, and Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, and Portsmouth in South Hampton Roads at one time or another. We also had a small operation for a parochial school in Northern Virginia for several years.
Our work included both government-operated and contract bus transportation, almost entirely intrastate within in Virginia, including the home-to-school yellow bus program of the entire school divisions for the independent cities of Petersburg and Hopewell. The drivers of our Hopewell operation set some kind of safety record in Virginia by operating two entire school years without a single accident in the late 1980s.
Virginia Overland also operated transportation for Head Start programs in Hopewell and Richmond, welfare-to-work transport in the Richmond metropolitan area, paratransit, and special operations (i.e. designing and managing transport shuttle bus systems for special events), including conventions and major NASCAR race events at Richmond International Raceway.
In our bus dealership activities, we sold over 3,000 new and used buses over a period of 28 years (1976-2004), over 2/3 of which were Wayne Corporation products. We also represented other franchised product lines, including Mid Bus, Champion Bus Incorporated, and several manufacturers of wheelchair lifts and accessories. Our garages conducted preventative maintenance programs on our own fleets and those of customers, as well as selling parts and performing warranty and body repairs.
We downsized considerably after 1989, and our business based at a single location in Richmond eventually closed completely in 2004 following a reverse privatization of our two largest contracts. However, a former Virginia Overland school transportation operation based in Norfolk (which we sold in 1991) continued under the other ownership as of 2007.
[edit] Career experience
My career experience includes most aspects of bus operations and sales, including management and finance, planning and proposal writing, motor vehicle accident investigation, driver training, and the vendor side of federal, state, and local governmental procurement. I often served as start-up and/or project managers.
I am qualified as a dealer-operator in Virginia, overseeing administration of our franchised bus dealerships for over 25 years without a single dealer violation. (1977 to 2004).
In 1981, after we opened our large garage in Petersburg, I qualified with the Virginia State Police to oversee a Motor Vehicle Inspection Station, and was in a management oversight (but not a state inspector) capacity from 1981 until 2004, during which time, we had inspection stations licensed at Petersburg, then Hopewell, and lastly Richmond (one at a time, in that order). The state troopers maintain a direct relationship with each qualified inspector, so something which occurred directly between them I may not have been made aware of, but I believe that our inspection stations during my management oversight period incurred no violations to the best of my knowledge.
Beginning in 1976, I was also qualified to oversee regulated common carriers and restricted common carriers of passengers by the Virginia State Corporation Commission until 1996, when Motor Carrier operations in Virginia were essentially deregulated, and oversight shifted to DMV.
I was a member of the 1986 Outstanding Dealer Council for Wayne Corporation and won many sales awards. I also served as a director of the Virginia Motorcoach Association in the early 1990s. With that group, I helped lobby the Virginia General Assembly during the 1980s, primarily regarding commercial bus and school bus laws. (Like I said, I enjoy almost anything bus-related!).
I started using computers around 1979, and used a database named Filepro under Unix systems. (Does anyone else remember the TRS-80 in their "senior" moments?). In later years, I worked extensively with database applications, Qualcomm GPS tracking, as well as several bus routing and scheduling applications. I am reasonably proficient in programs such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Internet Explorer, and Streets and Trips, although I am always interested in learning more.
[edit] Destinations: Virginia
An important part of my work with buses involved planning group trips and tours around Virginia (our company served mostly in-state destinations). I learned which attractions groups seemed to enjoy the most, as well as how to narrate guided tours. Since it easier to narrate a subject of which you are both knowledgeable and personally interested, I found myself doing additional research in libraries, by watching the "History Channel", and by Internet web searches.
The latter activity led me to Wikipedia in 2002, and before long, I became a contributor to subjects for which I had information to add. I worked intensely on a small number of articles which gained featured article status and was named an administrator in early 2005. Later that year along with other Wikipedians involved in Wikipedia:WikiProject Virginia, I started working on improving many articles related to Jamestown as a part of preparing for the worldwide attention anticipated for the Jamestown 2007 celebration.
[edit] Moderating Yahoo! railway and bus groups
For the past 5 years, in addition to working as a Wikipedia editor and administrator, I do some other writing. Since 2002, I have started and moderate five Yahoo! Groups on the Internet for bus and railway enthusiasts.
I am especially proud of Virginian Railway Enthusiasts, which is in the top 2.3% of Yahoo! railway groups by membership (800 members) as of April 2007. Some of our group members are actively involved in restoration and preservation activities in Virginia and West Virginia, and one group of retirees meets weekly to answer questions posed on the Internet from members on several continents. Large group seminars are held periodically. This Yahoo! group also includes a number of published authors. The next annual gathering is May 2-4, 2008 near Mullens, West Virginia, and will be called the Virginian Railway at Milepost 2008.
These are the Yahoo! special interest transportation groups I moderate:
- Virginian Railway Enthusiasts
- Richmond Rails
- Circus Train Enthusiasts
- Juice Train Enthusiasts
- Wayne Bus Enthusiasts
[edit] Full-circle: voluntary caregiver
Even when I became an adult, my parents and I remained very close over the years and we managed our family business together for 23 years until they retired in 1996, largely due my father's deteriorating health. My parents had both long-expressed wishes to not be put in nursing homes in their final years, if at all possible. This was accomplished for each of them.
Marvin Fisher passed away at home on March 24, 1997 after battling cancer for over 8 years. However, I stayed quite close to my mother, Ruth Fisher, who lived alone and continued to stay interested and informally involved in the business until she became partially disabled with mid-stage Alzheimer's Disease several years later.
The dementia had occurred on the maternal side of her family in the past. At the earliest onset of her first symptoms in 1999, we were able to discuss and begin facing it. I think this helped her cope without as much panic and despair as many victims must experience. Despite limitations, she still enjoyed many things, including her pets, music, riding around (no one thought Virginia more beautiful than she), and socializing.
Beginning in 1999, I began more of a part-time role with our bus company, which had full-time managers. They helped make it possible for me to often work from my Mom's home by computer, which seemed to fit very well with my family responsibilities. In late 2002, I became interested in Wikipedia, contributing more actively beginning in 2003. While researching various Wikipedia articles, I found myself in a "learning" mode on a variety of topics, something which has continued to the current time.
Mom and I had always been night owls. Although they were married 50 years, my father, a very organized man trained in accounting, could never figure that out. His favorite expression, often in response to some light-hearted or zany behavior of my Mom was "For Heaven's Sake". Those words from me often generated a flash of memory in her eyes.
After Virginia Overland Transportation closed in June, 2004, we moved from Richmond to Williamsburg, which has became a retirement location of choice for many other people as well. There, she had several more years enjoying her home, music and pets, as well as the sights of the Colonial Williamsburg and the Historic Triangle. A long-dedicated shunpiker, she especially enjoyed our toll-free rides on the bucolic Colonial Parkway and the scenic Jamestown Ferry.
While I was her principal voluntary caregiver, or "carer", to use an international terminology which is applied to a growing legions of folks, I did have help. Beginning in 2003, I was assisted greatly by our long-time friend Dave Swan, who lived with us in Richmond and Williamsburg before he passed away in November, 2006. In Mom's final year, part-time companion-aides contributed to Mom's safety and happiness. While her capacity was diminished by the partial dementia, Mom retained her sense of humor, love of music and appetite right up until her final illness, which was of only a short duration.
My mom passed away on September 15, 2007. An article in School Transportation News Online dated Sept. 17 is very informative about her: STN Online: Founder of Virginia Overland Transportation Co. Dies.
[edit] Favorite Quotation: To be a Virginian
One of my favorite quotations is:
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- "To be a Virginian, either by Birth, Marriage, Adoption, or even on one's Mother's side is an Introduction to any State in the Union, a Passport to any Foreign Country, and a Benediction from Above"
Not meeting any of those criteria, I nevertheless strive to someday be considered a Virginian, albeit a transplanted one. <gr>
[edit] See also
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- updated Mark in Historic Triangle of Virginia 21:56, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
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