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Wisconsin 14-year-old saves bus full of students after driver loses consciousness
A Wisconsin teen is being hailed as a hero for taking control of a school bus in April after the driver suffered a medical emergency.
Acie Holland III, 14, of Glendale, was riding the bus home on a typical Wednesday afternoon when he noticed the vehicle beginning to veer into the oncoming lane. According to WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee, the bus was carrying more than a dozen Glen Hills Middle School students at the time.
Acie said he looked at the driver and saw that she was unresponsive.
“I was looking at my phone and I looked back up and I felt the bus accelerate,” Acie told the news station. “And I looked at the bus driver because she went past my stop, and I looked and I seen her head just go down.”
Acie, an eighth grader who has worked on cars with his father since an early age, sprang into action. He moved the bus driver’s foot from the accelerator and hit the brakes.
“I wasn’t really scared,” Acie told CNN. “I was just trying to get the bus to stop.”
The teen was able to park the bus safely, WTMJ reported. He then called 911 and told his fellow students to call their parents.
“He’s an ace,” his father, Acie Holland II, said.
The bus driver regained consciousness and was able to call her dispatcher, who sent another driver out to take the children home, CNN reported.
Acie’s parents said the boy has always been “quick on his feet.” They and his principal, Anna Young, said that the teen never thinks twice before helping those around him.
“The compassion and leadership that we see him exhibit daily was taken to the next level on his bus ride home,” Young wrote in a note to parents. “We are grateful that all of our Glen Hills students are safe and are wishing their driver a healthy recovery.”
Dying Marine vet awarded high school diploma days before death
A Maryland school district last month teamed with a local American Legion post to give a dying U.S. Marine Corps veteran his final wish — a high school diploma.
Richard Remp, 98, of Poolesville, died two days after being awarded the diploma, according to Marine Corps Times. Remp, who earned the rank of gunnery sergeant, was known to friends as “Sarge” or “Gunny.”
The Times reported that Remp, who left high school to enlist in the Marines at age 17, first served in World War II, then in Korea and Vietnam. WDVM in Washington reported that, as a door gunner in Vietnam, Remp helped rescue nine Marines who had been surrounded by Viet Cong forces.
For more than an hour, while taking on fire from the ground, Remp’s helicopter circled overhead as the trapped men awaited help. Remp fired over 1,000 rounds of suppressive fire to protect his fellow Marines until they could be extracted.
The diploma was the idea of James Cappuccilli of American Legion Post 247. Cappuccilli described Remp as a gentle man, a “peach” who had a mischievous sense of humor.
“You would have never known he was a Marine, other than we talked a lot of Marine stuff,” Cappuccilli told the Times.
In February, Cappuccilli, a former school counselor, came up with the idea of securing a diploma for Remp, who had attended school in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania allows the awarding of diplomas to veterans who failed to graduate because they were serving during a war.
Justi Glaros, superintendent of the Sharon, Pennsylvania, school district stepped in to help because Cappuccilli mistakenly thought Remp had attended school there. When they discovered the mistake, Glaros tracked down Remp’s records at a nearby high school and began the process of getting him a diploma, the Times reported.
The do-gooders’ time ran short last month, however, when Cappuccilli learned that Remp had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and was in hospice care.
When Remp’s original school district could not speed up the process, Glaros went to her own school board, which issued an honorary diploma.
She then drove nearly five hours to Maryland to deliver the diploma, which she feared would not get there in time if she mailed it.
Remp was very happy to get the diploma, friends and family said.
“It was just an incredible honor to be able to give that to him,” Glaros told the Times. “When I was speaking with him, it was like we had been best friends forever.”