Marilyn Hood thought she’d dedicate her career to social work. And after graduating from Bethel College, she started down that path, working at a center that supported women who’d been raped or sexually assaulted. But with two children and dreams of buying a home, a job ad for what was then known as the Metropolitan Transit Commission caught her attention. As a bus operator, she could make double what she was earning as a counselor. Hood applied, began as a part-time operator and, within two years, went full-time. Hood would go on to build a 32-year career in transit. But while she found herself in an unexpected line of work, her passion for helping people never faded. 

Hood’s time at Metro Transit is roughly divided into thirds. For the first part of her career, she served as an operator at the Shingle Creek and Heywood garages. As an operator, she enjoyed having regular routes where she could get to know her customers. “It was the human contact that was really important to me,” she said. When she told a manager that she was considering a move to teaching, she was persuaded to instead join the agency’s nascent team of instructors, who would be charged with helping new operators get their start. As one of Metro Transit’s first full-time instructors, Hood wasn’t just teaching but also writing the first lesson plans that would guide her and her peers work. It was a good fit, too. “I totally enjoyed teaching,” she said. “The creativity, working with people from around the world and figuring out what makes them tick. It was really intellectually stimulating.” As a self-described introvert, she also learned how to stand in front of a group without revealing any apprehension. “I imagined myself as Meryl Streep, which allowed me to feel like I could be up there and be competent, confident and able to make a difference,” she said.  

A decade after becoming an instructor, Hood found herself at a retirement for a safety specialist who described their job as the best they’d ever had. Intrigued, she applied and got the job. As a safety specialist at Heywood Garage, Hood investigated accidents, monitored on-street performance, rode along with bus operators, provided input on new bus purchases and was involved in arbitration and legal proceedings. As she did as an instructor, she also helped break new ground, introducing classes built around videos from real accidents and other course materials. As a safety specialist, Hood especially liked having the chance to support operators who were involved in a collision but still showed promise. “I always wanted to be the advocate and this was one way to do that,” she said. During her time in safety, Hood also helped plan and organize the agency’s annual Bus Roadeo,   

Hood retired in July 2018 with plans to move to Texas, her home state, and commit herself to humanitarian work. “I feel really fortunate to have worked in an organization that offers opportunity, diversity and support,” she said.  

Growing up, Tom O’Brien often worked on cars and joined his dad while he worked as a mechanic, crawling underneath vehicles to apply grease in areas he had an easier time reaching. The experiences developed an interest in vehicle maintenance that would eventually lead him to attend vocational school and to apply for a job at what was then the Metropolitan Transit Commission. “I wanted to work on biggest stuff and buses are pretty big,” he said. In late 1985, O’Brien began as a skilled helper at the old Snelling Garage, the start of what would become a nearly 33-year career.

O’Brien’s career in bus maintenance included time at nearly every garage and in positions as a skilled helper, cleaner, fueler and technician. After old Snelling closed, he moved to South where he spent over 12 years working the overnight shift. As a technician, he did a little bit of everything – powertrain maintenance, hoist repairs, tune-ups and inspections – gaining expertise along the way. He was particularly interested in the powertrain work, he said, because it allowed him to learn about new technologies that were appearing in the fleet.

The final four years of O’Brien’s career were spent at the Overhaul Base, where he worked in the Body Shop as a welder. Along with his fellow technicians, the job involved cutting steel for replacement bus panels and a host of other odd jobs, including fabricating custom parts requested by other departments. “There’s such a wide variety of stuff that comes through here, which keeps the job interesting,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien retired in July 2018, just two months shy of the day he began, 33 years earlier. Looking back, he said he was glad to have found a home at Metro Transit, where he made many friendships and enjoyed good benefits. In retirement, O’Brien said he looks forward to spending more time with his wife, children and grandchildren and bringing his RV and off-road Jeep to parts of the country he hasn’t yet explored.

Working at a south Minneapolis auto shop, Jay Capistrant often visited with operators who came in to escape the cold during their breaks. The conversations sparked an interest in the job and, in 1974, led him to apply. He began his career at the old Northside Garage and later spent time at the Nicollet and old Snelling garages. As an extraboard operator, he drove a variety of routes. Capistrant enjoyed the job and was a skilled operator, with impressive showings in two Bus Rodeos. But after six years behind the wheel, he found himself seeking better hours and less stress. He applied for and got a new job as a revenue clerk, a move that would lead to a nearly four-decade career in Revenue Operations. “I loved driving the bus, but I’ll always be grateful I made that switch,” Capistrant said. 

Capistrant spent three years as a revenue clerk and spent another three years as a balancing clerk. At the time, operators manually recorded boardings on records known as trip sheets, which were then reviewed by clerks like Capistrant. Any irregularities discovered by clerks led to additional follow up. In 1986, Capistrant took on another new role, as a passenger sampling clerk, that would come to define his career. The job involved riding the bus or setting up somewhere along a route to count passengers, helping to develop ridership estimates. “I got to be out and about a lot, which was great except when it was 20 below,” Capistrant said. 

The role took on greater visibility when the METRO Blue Line opened in 2004. Eager to know how many people were riding the state’s first light rail line, Capistrant spent hours riding the train to provide some of the first estimates. “Everyone was starving for ridership numbers so the train really became home to me there for a while,” he said. “That’s when I started noticing I’d need a seat cushion.” The appetite for information eventually began to wane, and technology was introduced that automatically counted passengers. Capistrant continued to ride, though, verifying data and making observations that helped estimate ridership for large events. Most days, he spent as much as five hours riding the Blue Line, Green Line or a bus. While focused on the task at hand, the job allowed him to befriend regular customers and fellow employees and to observe the daily life that unfolded on the train. 

Near retirement, Capistrant said he was proud to have built a career at Metro Transit and amazed at the growth he’d witnessed during his 43 years of service. “When I started in 1974, this was just a bus company with a few old buses,” he said. “Now we have two light rail lines, millions of rides, we’ve helped the cities grow. I’m really proud to have been a part of that.” Capistrant’s career choice was also a fateful one: In 2002, he was introduced to a new co-worker, Mary Capistrant. He offered to help her with a carpentry project and she offered to make him dinner. Five years later, they were married.

In retirement, Capistrant planned to spend more time on a long-running family carpentry business, continue volunteering with Allina Health Hospice and restore a 1973 half-ton Chevy pick-up. 

When Richard Kasprzak visited the unemployment office for help finding a job, the woman he met threw up her hands and declared the then 23-year-old needed to go back to school. Instead of taking that advice, he left the office, immediately found a payphone and called the Metropolitan Transit Commission to ask about applying for a job as a part-time bus operator. It wasn’t quite what he'd had in mind but the job had been recommended by a longtime neighbor who happened to know a thing about transit: Fred T. Heywood, who led the agency’s first service development department and would later become the namesake for a new Minneapolis garage and office. Kasprzak would spend the next decade as a bus operator and another 23 years in bus maintenance and material management. By the end of his career, Kasprzak estimated he’d held more than 100 different assignments, the kind of variety that kept him engaged throughout his three decades in transit.

As a bus operator, Kasprzak worked at every garage except for Ruter and spent most of his time at South and old Snelling, where he could take the bus to and from work. While he had to sacrifice many of his nights and weekends, Kasprzak enjoyed driving and never had any accidents. The longer he stayed, though, the more he realized he needed to find a new challenge. He considered starting a new career in electronics or real estate but ultimately decided to go back to school and pursue a career in bus maintenance. He spent three years going to school full time and acquiring skills as a cleaner and helper. He enjoyed the work, but as graduation approached he was offered a job as a stockkeeper. The job had long intrigued him, and he had some previous delivery experience, so he took the gig.

As a stockkeeper, Kasprzak spent time at each garage and in a variety of roles. He enjoyed the constant changes and the opportunity to meet and work with people across the organization. One of his favorite jobs was as a truck driver, delivering parts to work locations throughout the Twin Cities. “You’d stop by, say hello, then be back on the road,” he said. “It made the day go by pretty quickly.” Kasprzak also enjoyed the challenge of keeping the stockroom organized and earned a reputation for being an “idea guy” who was always eager to make suggestions. He helped design and introduce a recognition program for material management employees and created a checklist that helped improve cycle counts.  

In retirement, Kasprzak planned to spend more time with his son and grandchildren, old friends, biking and traveling. “I’m glad I was able to work here so long,” he said at his retirement. “We are all very lucky to have such good, stable jobs.”

Patrick Brown didn’t think he wanted a job that involved a lot of public interaction. But with a six-month-old child and another on the way, he needed to find work that would allow him to support his growing family. A hiring sign hanging on the side of the old Northside Garage gave him the idea of applying for a job as a bus operator. He reported to the old Snelling Garage, passed the hiring test and was immediately thrown into a class with other new hires. Shortly after that, he began working out of Shingle Creek Garage (now the Martin J. Ruter Garage). And so began what would become a 38-year career in transit.

Brown spent more than seven years as a bus operator, working the extraboard at the Heywood and Nicollet garages. He liked the job but started to feel like he needed something more. “I saw another operator who was a week behind me in seniority with a supervisor badge and that’s what kind of lit the fuse for me,” Brown said. “I had to find out where the job board was.” In 1987, Brown’s ambitions led to a new job as a Transit Supervisor.

Initially, Brown split his time between answering calls in the Transit Control Center and managing service out on the street. When those roles were divided into separate jobs, Brown began spending all his time on the road. (The first car he was assigned was a Chevy Citation.) It was, he said, an easy choice. “Nobody ever calls the Control Center to say, ‘Have a nice day,’” Brown said. “There’s always a problem.” As a supervisor, Brown watched to see how closely buses were following their schedules, managed planned and emergency detours, responded to accidents and got back to customers who had questions or concerns. For years, his days began at 4 a.m., an hour before any other Minneapolis supervisors. With the city to himself, his primary responsibility was to make sure that a group of early-morning buses met as scheduled. Brown said he enjoyed the relative freedom that came with the job and serving a community he knew well: Brown often found himself in Northeast Minneapolis, near his boyhood home and where he later lived as an adult. “I live right in the middle of my district so, to a degree, I’d go to work and then go right back home,” he said. 

While there was a degree of routine, Brown found himself in plenty of unique situations. In one instance, he helped line up buses that were used to provide a layer of protection as the Minneapolis Fed moved cash into its new building on Hennepin Avenue. Presidential visits led to interactions with the Secret Service. He worked through two Super Bowls and two World Series. And he was tapped to be the driver for what was essentially the Metro Transit Police Department’s first squad car, carrying police to and from a St. Louis Park roller rink where teenagers gathered. “There was such a variety of things,” Brown said. “You’d come to work and never really know what was going to come over the radio.”

Brown retired in April 2018 with plans to spend his retirement traveling, fishing and enjoying his family, including his wife, three sons and six grandchildren.

Growing up, David Lefebvre thought he’d enjoy being a pilot. But as an adult he ended up flying just once, an experience he didn’t enjoy. He did, however, find himself in a driver’s seat for a large part of his career. Encouraged by his brother, a 21-year bus operator, Lefebvre joined what was then the Metropolitan Transit Commission in 1986. He spent the next eight years driving buses and the following 24 years working in bus and facilities maintenance.

As an operator Lefebvre, split his time between the Nicollet and South garages. Low in seniority, the first route he was given involved bringing groups of rowdy teenagers to and from a roller rink in St. Louis Park. “All they told me was to put my foot to the gas and not to stop until I got downtown,” he remembered. The job remained interesting, too. When heavy rain fell in 1987, he found himself having to back an articulated bus back onto Interstate 494 to avoid driving through standing water. To keep a group of suspected pick-pockets from exiting the bus before police could arrive, he locked the doors and they escaped out a rear window. 
 
While he enjoyed driving and interacting with most of his passengers, those scenarios and a schedule that required him to work a lot of late nights and weekends ultimately led Lefebvre to pursue a new line of work in Bus Maintenance. He’d tinkered some with cars and was confident he could learn the skills he needed by working alongside experienced technicians. And that’s what happened: Lefebvre spent two years as a cleaner, five years as a fueler and then became a technician, swapping radiators, bellows, rods and doing other hoist work. Lefebvre’s time in bus maintenance was spent largely at South Garage. It was the right place at the right time: at South, Lefebvre met the woman who would later become his wife, Beth Radke, who was then working as an operator.
 
After nearly a decade, Lefebvre had, by his own estimation, become an “above average” technician. But all the heavy lifting was beginning to wear on him, so he decided to try his hand at building maintenance. He spent a few years at the Overhaul Base, returned to South and spent the final eight years of his career at Nicollet Garage. In building maintenance, Lefebvre did electrical work, plumbing and a variety of other tasks, once again learning on the job. “I like fixing things and that’s basically all building maintenance is – fixing anything that breaks,” he said.
 
On his final day of work, Lefebvre said he’d miss many of the people he worked with over the years. But he also had a lot to look forward to. He and Beth recently had their first child, Ruby. Lefebvre also hoped to spend more time golfing, fishing, hunting and building a cabin on a piece of Wisconsin property he’d owned for the past 20 years. “It’s really been fun being here,” he said. “It’ll be sad and a little strange not coming in after all these years.”

Brad Smith thought he’d have a career in radio. So after studying the business in Minneapolis, he returned to his hometown and started working at the station there. But it didn’t last long. Encouraged by his father, he gave up the job and returned to Minneapolis to pursue a relationship with a woman he’d met while in school. It was a good move: Smith married that woman, Sue, who put him in touch with family members working in transit. It wasn’t long before those connections led him to apply for a job as a bus operator, the first stop in what would become a 40-year career at Metro Transit.
 
When he started as a bus operator at Nicollet Garage in 1978, Smith had a lot to learn. He didn’t know the area and remembers thinking of North Memorial as sounding more like a statute than a hospital. He was also a little unsure behind the wheel. “I was getting passed all the time, and could never stay on schedule,” Smith said. “I remember thinking this was the biggest mistake I ever made.”
 
Smith eventually found his way, though, and stuck with it hoping his new line of work would lead him back to his passion for radio. He applied for a job in the Transit Control Center, where he’d communicate with bus operators by radio, and was taken on in 1980. Smith joked that, in the new job, he instantly had more listeners there he ever had working at the Wisconsin station. It was especially clear that he had an audience when, working on Christmas Eve, he was encouraged to extend a “Merry Christmas,” to all the operators working that evening. The responses he received consumed most of the rest of the evening. On another memorable winter night, a blizzard left him stranded in the TCC for over 36 hours.
 
Smith wasn’t entirely bound to the desk, though. Like others in the TCC, Smith also spent time on the street monitoring operations. Getting out into the community became increasingly appealing, too. Given the opportunity to devote all his attention to the street, he took it. As one of the agency’s first transit supervisors, he monitored suburban service that Metro Transit was being provided under contract. He later took responsibility for a large swath of south Minneapolis and Bloomington, including the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. At the airport, he helped coordinate employee shuttles and maintain service through large projects, including the construction of what was then known as the Hiawatha light rail line. His familiarity with the area led him to take a leading role in developing plans to provide bus service when light rail trains couldn’t operate.
 
There were plenty of memorable moments from Smith’s time as a transit supervisor, too. On Thanksgiving night 1982, he worked through the night and into the next day as buses had to be detoured around a large fire that consumed a downtown Minneapolis high rise. Working at the airport led to several encounters with well-known figures. “The neat thing about my job is that, even though I can make a list of things to do, I never really know what my day will bring,” he said. “I’ve seen presidents, huge disasters – it makes for good storytelling at parties.”
 
In retirement, Smith planned to spend time with his family, including four children and seven grandchildren. He also hopes to travel and to take on more opportunities to DJ. “I’m going to miss it, but it’s time to move on,” he said.

Dale Massie grew up just a block off University Avenue, and his father William Massie spent 37 years as a streetcar and bus operator. So it wasn’t all that surprising when, after working briefly as an over-the-road truck driver, Massie followed in his father’s footsteps and started a career of his own in transit. 

After 18 months at the newly-opened Heywood Garage, Massie returned to St. Paul where he worked at the old Snelling and East Metro garages. Among his favorite routes was Route 71, which went right by his home. After retiring, Massie said he was proud of the service he provided over the course of his 30-year career. “The job wasn’t always easy but I tried to do my best so everyone had a good ride and got to where they needed to safely,” he said.
 
When he retired in January 2018, Massie said he didn’t have any immediate plans but that he was considering moving south to enjoy warmer weather.

Growing up on St. Paul’s East Side, Mark Glocke would often catch up with his dad, a bus operator, and ride back to the old Snelling Garage with him at the end of his shift. “That’s probably where I got my first smell of bus exhaust,” he said. He also spent his high school years learning to take apart and repair engines. The experiences made a lasting impression: After going to school for heavy diesel mechanics, Glocke applied for a job in bus maintenance and within days was working as a cleaner at the very same garage his father had took him to as a boy. It was the first of many stops in a career that would eventually span more than four decades.

Glocke’s time as a cleaner was short-lived – he became a helper his first week and, within a year, was working as a technician. As a technician, he performed tune-ups, built engines and repaired what were known as “smokers,” buses that had engine leaks and were emitting large amounts of exhaust. After a brief venture in the trucking industry, Glocke returned in 1982 to serve as a supervisor at Nicollet Garage. It was a difficult job: Buses frequent broke down and he had to rally an unruly group of technicians to do whatever they could to get all the necessary buses out each day. He succeeded and was rewarded with more responsibility at the larger Snelling Garage, then home to nearly 300 buses.

Those experiences led to what would become the most significant role of his career, a 23-year run as body shop supervisor. Unlike his previous roles, the job wasn’t just about managing people. At the time, technicians were primarily responding to immediate needs and haphazardly repairing buses that could be set aside for a few days. Glocke helped implement a program that led every bus to be fully-refurbished halfway through its in-service life, usually after six or seven years on the street. Figuring out when and how to pull buses for these mid-life repairs was quite a task, but Glocke was committed to making it work. The motivation to do well came in part from his time in the trucking industry. “We’d see buses with their panels flapping and just laugh, joking that they were about to take off into flight,” he said. Metro Transit would soon become known for having one of the best-looking and top performing fleets in the nation. The body shop also developed a reputation for bringing buses back to life after major collisions. Glocke can only think of a handful of buses that were deemed beyond repair during his tenure. The success reflects the strong sense of ownership and accountability Glocke promoted among technicians in the body shop. “People knew if we didn’t do a good job, we’d have to redo it,” he said.

Even so, the shop was a laboratory where new and tenuous ideas could be tested without fear of failure. The body shop frequently received requests to build custom tools that could be used on the shop floor or in other parts of the business. One of the most unique challenges the body shop received was to adorn a bus with lights for the holidays – what would become known as the beloved “Twinkle Bus.” “We had a lot of side jobs where we’d just have to get everybody together and say, ‘What can we do here?’” Glocke said. “It was fast, it was fun and there were always lots of challenges.”

In the final year of his career, Glocke was tapped to serve as the acting assistant manager of the Overhaul Base, where he helped oversee operations and advised his successor in the body shop. In retirement, he plans to enjoy his family, including three children and six grandchildren, finish some house projects, and spend more time hunting, fishing and enjoying the outdoors. He also hoped to do more traveling, including some long-distance train trips, and to stay involved in the Ham Lake Lions Club.

When Gary Bier showed up to apply for a job with Metro Mobility, he was told they weren’t hiring. But just two weeks after putting his name in, he got a call and was asked to begin working as what was then known as an order taker. His job, essentially, was to answer the phone and help Metro Mobility customers schedule trips. Metro Mobility provides door-to-door transportation to individuals who can’t use regular route transit service.

He enjoyed the work, but in 1985 Metro Mobility services were contracted out and Bier was left with a decision: transfer to the Transit Information Center (TIC) or find a new line of work. He chose to join the TIC, where he’d build a 38-year career and retire as the department’s most senior employee. Bier helped customers plan well over 1 million trips during his career and said he enjoyed helping people understand how to get where they needed to go. “I would say 99 percent of callers were very appreciative of the service, going back to when I started to present day,” he said shortly before retiring.

Bier’s presence was one of the few constants during his tenure at the TIC. In the mid-1980s, TIC representatives used a thick directory of printed schedules and large wall maps to help customers, often spending more than 20 minutes planning a single trip. By the time Bier retired, it wasn’t uncommon for representatives to take up to 200 calls a day, planning trips within minutes online. Bier developed a firm grasp of the system, but still used the new trip planning tools to verify his intuition and avoid leading people astray.

Besides being a patient presence on the phone, Bier strongly supported his co-workers. He coached fellow representatives and spent nearly 20 years training new hires. “I liked the interaction and the challenge,” he said. “You had to find different ways of communicating with people.” Bier also spent more than 13 years as a union steward, representing ATU Local 1005 members in Transit Information, Finance and Service Development. Bier said he enjoyed representing his fellow union members and working with management to resolve issues. “We could disagree but at the end of the day, I understood where they were coming from and they understood where I was coming from and we both wanted the best for the employees,” he said.

In retirement, Bier plans to get long-stalled projects done around the house and spend more time with his family, including his wife, whom he met while working at Metro Mobility, children and grandchildren.