Nestled between two busy Kalamazoo roads is a small, short one-way street.
It's name: Eddie's Lane. It caught the curiosity of Kalamazoo Township resident Bob Schellenberg when he was a student at Western.
“I heard that from one of my teachers, that Eddie was a bus driver that drove between the east and west campus.”
Bob is now a bus driver himself, for the Kalamazoo Public Schools, and he wants to know if what he heard in college was true.
We meet John Winchell, a curator with WMU’s Zhang Legacy Archives, at Eddie’s Lane, where he confirmed Bob's story.
“Western had a long-time bus driver named Edward “Eddie” Powless. He worked for Western from 1942 until 1975.”
Winchell said Eddie was known for driving a route built a decade after he started working at Western Michigan College, now known as Western Michigan University.
“When he first arrived on campus, Western was essentially the east campus, as we call it today, along Oakland Drive. But after World War II, Western expanded onto what you refer to as main campus or west campus," Winchell said.
"And in 1952, they established a shuttle bus route taking students back and forth between the two campuses. And Eddie was the primary driver for that shuttle bus route.”
Winchell said Eddie also handled many other bus rides.
"In his oral history, he talks about going as far west as Yellowstone National Park. He talks about going down to New Orleans for spring training with the baseball team. He talks about going as far as Key West in Florida and east to Maine and Boston," Winchell said.
“He was taking trips all across the country with different types of student groups, with the French club, with this high school travel club, with athletic teams because he was— drove many of the athletic teams to games and events.”
Basically, if you were a Western student at this time, you’d likely find yourself boarding Eddie’s bus at some point.
Winchell said that was great, because Eddie was well-known for being a really nice guy.
“Every bit of writing about him that I found talks about him as always having a smile for everyone. There's an oral history he did just before he passed away where he talked about trying to always remember everybody's name,” Winchell said.
"So, if you got on his bus, he probably greeted you by name, greeted you with a smile, would carry on conversation with people regularly."
Winchell said there were also stories about Eddie helping riders board and greeting them warmly.
“Stories like that were common with Eddie where people felt like he was their friend. There's a yearbook photo in 1965 with a picture of him talking to a student kind of leaning out the bus window. And the caption is ‘Eddie Powless: the shuttle bus driver is everybody's friend.’”
But how did the lane come to be named after Eddie?
Winchell said the street didn’t have a name when it was built in 1955, to connect Stadium Drive to Oakland Drive. But Eddie used it a lot, as it shortened the trip between east and west campus. So, Western students decided to name the street after him, putting up their own makeshift sign.
“And of course, the school at the time was kind of, ‘wait, wait, wait, wait a second. You can't just put signs up.”
But the students adored Eddie, so they pushed to get the street named after him.
“It actually went to the city commission.”
To make it official, Commissioner Henry Upjohn proposed the name Eddie’s Lane.
“Willis Dunbar, who is faculty at Western in the history department, seconded the motion. It passed unanimously.”
The decision was applauded by the public, with one Kalamazoo Gazette article from 1956 stating, “There probably isn’t a single person in Kalamazoo that doesn’t respect this bus driver.”
And Winchell said Eddie was honored.
“He was proud of the fact that the students liked him well enough that they lobbied for it and he really felt a bond with the students and at the end of his oral history, he comments that he feels like driving buses for the university and working with the students so long kept him young.”
So, our question-asker Bob Schellenberg had the right idea about the origin of Eddie’s Lane.
He said it’s nice to know there’s a road in Kalamazoo named after a fellow busman.
“He sounds like a dedicated bus driver who made a good impression on people and somebody I’d look up to.”
Winchell said the sign for the small one-way road was more than just a reminder of the bus driver who once road on it.
"I think it's one of those reminders to all of us that hopefully we're trying to live our lives the best way and be kind to one another."
Eddie Powless died on New Year’s Day of 1995. There’s no audio for the oral history he recorded near the end of his life, but a transcript can be found in WMU University Libraries' digital collection. Click on the double arrow at the top right of the embedded page to see the transcript.
Michael Symonds reports for WMUK through the Report for America national service program.
