Beloved School Bus Driver Ed Schoeller Loses Battle With COVID On Easter Sunday
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - A beloved school bus driver is remembered for his selflessness and sense of humor.
Ed Schoeller, 50, died on Easter Sunday from complications due to COVID-19.
As a well-known voice on KQRS in the 90's, Mindy Collins will never forget the unlikely friendship forged at a live broadcast.
"Being in radio it's all about me" Collins joked. "Frankly I was a little sick and tired of that."
"He sat down at my table and we had the shirts out, the prizes and what not. I invited him to sit down - there was just something about him that was kind and he started joking immediately. His name was Ed Schoeller and we've been friends ever since," she said.
Whether it was searching for people to push out of the snow, changing strangers' tires or lending friends cash, Schoeller defined compassion.
"Every time we had a conversation he would be concerned about someone and going and helping," Collins said.
That carried through on the school bus he drove for more than 20 years for Rehbein Transit.
Taking kids to and from Centennial and White Bear Lake High Schools and delivering food to the students he worried wouldn't get enough when schools were closed for much of the year.
"He was one in our industry that stuck it out through all this and worked every day. He was one that just kept doing his job," Steve Latour said, a colleague at Rehbein Transit.
Schoeller worked that job until the middle of March.
A few days later he was hospitalized and on a ventilator fighting COVID-19.
On Easter Sunday, Schoeller took his last breath at St. Joseph's Hospital; the same hospital where 50 years before, he had taken his first.
"It is tragic especially for a guy willing to do so much for family, coworkers and friends," Latour said.
"When someone is not in the best of health there are possible consequences and it's really sad," Collins said.
"I miss him. COVID is real. COVID-19 is real," she added.