‘Father of School Bus,’ Frank Cyr, Dies at 95
Frank W. Cyr, called the “father of the yellow school bus,” died Aug. 1 at a nursing home in Stamford, N.Y., at the age of 95.
In 1939, Mr. Cyr was instrumental in drafting national standards, including the distinctive yellow color with black letters, for school buses.
He was a professor of rural education at Teachers College, Columbia University, until his retirement in 1965, and helped launch school-improvement projects in small, remote school districts.
Oveta Culp Hobby, the first U.S. secretary of health, education, and welfare, died Aug. 16 at her home in Houston. She was 90.
President Eisenhower appointed Mrs. Hobby to head the newly formed Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953. She was the second woman to hold a Cabinet post and had helped create the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps during World War II.
Toru Kumon, a Japanese educator who devised a system of teaching mathematics that bears his name, died July 25 at a hospital near his home in Osaka, Japan. He was 81.
The Kumon method encourages students to learn at their own pace and seeks to instill self-confidence.
It is taught in the United States and about 30 countries around the world, to more than 2 million students each year. (See Education Week, May 17, 1989.)
Robert Hoppock, a pioneer in the field of vocational guidance, died Aug. 5 at a nursing home in Vista, Calif. He was 93.
Mr. Hoppock helped organize the department of guidance at New York University in 1939 and became its first chairman and professor of counselor education. He worked as a consultant to the federal government and several state departments of education before he retired in 1972.
Evelyn N. Wood, the founder of a speed-reading system taught around the world, died Aug. 26 in Tucson, Ariz. She was 86.
She developed her theories of reading comprehension in the 1950s and later expanded them into a series of institutes nationwide. Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics courses are still offered in seminars around the country.
