Dr. Rick Grubb, the man who made the school buses run, has died at age 67. Services will be announced later. Arrangements were by Bridges Funeral Home and the full obituary is here.
I liked Rick Grubb. He was old-school, mentored by Roy Mullins. His work ethic was classic. Rick could argue with bus contractors or cajole them into stretching a route or picking up an additional one. His was the voice advocating for fair treatment, a variable gasoline reimbursement and other considerations for bus contractors.
His parents named him Rickey Ray. He graduated from Carter High School in 1972, picked up a couple of college degrees and capped his education with a doctorate from the University of Tennessee in 1998. Along the way, he worked more than 30 years for Knox County Schools as a teacher, coach, administrator and director of transportation.
Fountain City guy Mike Kinnane met Rick in 1966. “Jim Williams asked me to coach the basketball team at Sunnyview Elementary. Rick was a seventh grader.”
So, Kinnane coached Grubb for two years at Sunnyview and for another in freshman football at Carter High. “We were the county champs,” Kinnane recalls. He stayed friends with Grubb over the years, probably because Rick moved to Fountain City.
Kinnane knew Rick as a student and later as a colleague. He was amazed at Rick’s capacity for work. “He was always doing something.”
After high school, Rick started college. He also had an early-morning milk route. And he and his brother ran a service station at 4-Way Inn. “He did all three of these things at the same time. Rick Grubb was a hustler, a go-getter.”
Mike and Rick worked on their master’s degrees at LMU at the same time, but Mike didn’t follow him to UT for a doctorate. “He was always at work. Rick was a good friend. On the side, he had music systems and played at weddings. We called him ‘the round man of sound.’”
And Mike had a final story. “I was cleaning the gutters on my house and climbed up on the sunroom (to reach the highest gutters). I felt uneasy about coming down, so I asked (wife) Anne to, “get Rick over here to get me off this roof.”
But Rick didn’t come alone. “It was embarrassing enough to call him for help without him bringing his friends,” said Mike. “I was as close to him as any student I ever had in class.”