Paul Harvey was a legendary American radio broadcaster for ‘ABC News Radio.’ His famous ‘The Rest of the Story’ segments were beloved by listeners, reaching over 24 million people per week.
Paul begins telling the story by describing Reed Stout, a school principal, coach, and sometimes bus driver from Lambertville, Michigan. Reed was in charge of every grade and taught the kids everything they knew about football, basketball, and baseball.
He was driving the bus after school one day and was about to pull away from the curb after dropping off some students. A small group of boys and girls were looking forward to something in front of the bus.
Reed felt like he could go no further, thinking something was in the way, so he stopped the bus. He told some kids onboard to look at what was in front of the bus, and they reported that a little girl was crouching down in front of the bus.
Reed looked over his windshield and even stood up, but he couldn’t see the girl. He left the bus to see where she was located. He looked down at the right front wheel, and the girl was grabbing her scattered papers and books that had fallen.
Susie, age 9, didn’t realize any danger. Reed was overcome with emotion and relief, and he began to cry. He admonished Susie and sent her on her way. That evening, after being shaken, Reed went home and told his wife that he’d almost run over a child. He couldn’t concentrate the rest of the week and lost sleep.
He was given no peace until he solved the dilemma of the bus blindspot. One year later, he was in the backyard and saw a shiny decorative sphere on top of a piece of pottery. He cut it in half and mounted it on the bus. Reed had created the first convex mirror on a school bus. The sphere-shaped mirror gave the driver a wide-angle view around their bus. Paul closes the story, saying, “He made no headlines, he erased them, and now you know the rest of the story.”
