In Memory of Mark

[Greg G.]

This is the 11th anniversary of the death of Mark McLaughlin, a bus driver in Seattle.  I never knew Mark, the incident happened before I started working for the same outfit, but it hits very close to home.  I think of Mark and the way he touched the life of Anne Washburn whenever some of the customers start to get on my nerves.

http://tinyurl.com/dk6egu

He drove her out of darkness

By Danny Westneat
Seattle Times staff columnist

Friday, April 29, 2005

There was a time when Ann Washburn felt the dull ache of loneliness even when she was around the people she knew best.

She didn't mix much with co-workers. Her family relationships were strained. She'd lie in bed all weekend, bewildered that in this web of people connected physically, emotionally, digitally, she still felt totally alone. Then one day she got on a Metro bus. It was the number 359, headed from Shoreline to her phone-company job in downtown Seattle.

The driver smiled and said hello. So what? Happens all the time. She may not even have noticed.

But when she got on the 359 the next day, and the day after, there was the same beaming driver. He always said hello. It wasn't her nature, but at some point she said hello back.

They made small talk.

He was big, nearly 300 pounds. He liked to goof around. Sometimes he'd stick his tongue out at bus drivers passing the other way.

She began to sit in the front of the bus to hear him talk. It was warm there, not cold and dark like inside her head.

One morning after another lonesome night, it hit her: "The only reason I'm getting out of bed is my bus driver."

How pathetic is that, she wondered. She didn't care. On her way to the bus stop was the only time she felt hope.

This went on for a year. She saw the driver only 30 minutes a day. He seemed congenitally happy. They always talked, but never about anything an eavesdropper would have judged interesting or important.

"He was just my bus driver, but he was my link to life," Washburn recalls. "I never said a thing about it or told him what he meant to me. I wonder if he knew?"

She credits him that her gray cloud of depression parted slightly. She took a risk, voicing an electronic hello in an Internet chat room and improbably meeting the man who would become her husband.

She moved to Everett and stopped riding that bus. A few months later, the driver was shot to death by a loner on the 359, the bus plunging off the Aurora Bridge.

That was 6 ½ years ago. I'm telling you this story now because last week Ann Washburn, 37, had a baby. And she named it after the bus driver: Mark Francis McLaughlin Washburn.

She admits it might seem obsessive. She did it to say what she never told McLaughlin in person — that he saved her life.

She also wants to say something more.

At times the crowded city feels empty. People drive solo in darkened SUVs. They pass unseeing on the sidewalk. They sit mutely at adjacent cubicles.

Sometimes a stranger leaps across the gulf, if only by making eye contact or saying hello.

Big deal, we shrug. We can't be bothered. Most of us, myself included, pass through our days acting as if basic human acknowledgment is as mundane as it is disposable.

Ann Washburn wants everyone to know there's a week-old baby up in Everett, name of Mark, who proves it's not.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com

[Phonesrfun]

Wow, that is quite a story.  It is amazing what the little things in life will do as far as affecting people.

That happened before I was in Seattle, so I had not heard of it, but for those that are not familiar with Seattle, the Aurora Avenue bridge is a very high bridge.  Seems to me that if a gunman wanted to comit suicide, he should have just jumped off the bridge and not shot a bus driver and taken the driver and the bus with him!

But that was not your message.  The message was that of giving hope and affecting people in a positive way fom the little things we do, and I love that message.

Thanks for posting it.

[bingster]

Great story, Briny.  My grandfather started out as a streetcar motorman before switching to driving a bus.  We were amazed that when he died, at least a quarter of the people who came to his funeral were his passengers.  Not all bus drivers are friendly, but those who are definitely become a part of peoples' lives.

[bwanna]

thank you, briny for the sad, yet heartening story.

it really doesn't take much to be pleasant to those we encounter during the day. this story shows how even small actions can mean the world to someone else.

[HobieSport]

Thanks for the great story and the good message to it Briny. Very sad about Mark, of course, but ya gotta admit a dramatic way to go...I shouldn't jest.

When I was a young and naive lad of about 20, and hadn't spent much time in the City, I was walking along the edge of Golden Gate Park in San Fransisco, and as a few people passed from time to time on the sidewalk, I'd slightly smile and quietly just say "hi", just like I would at home.

Well they all looked at me like I was crazy, and looked kind of startled and fearful, as if I might have wanted to do something evil to them or something, and they all clammed up and avoided eye contact and didn't say a word.

Then finally one lady did the same thing, but when she got a few yards past me, I guess it hit her that I was just being civil, and how rare that was in the City, and she stopped and turned around and sad in an affirming friendly voice "Hi!", and we just smiled for a second or two and then went our separate ways.  

It's really amazing what I simple smile and hello can do among "strangers".  My Dad used to always go to the same gas station in a town we used to pass through. I asked if they had the best cheap gas. Dad said "No, but it's worth it. The guy who runs this place has the greatest smile!"