His Son Took $38,000 From His Retirement and Never Repaid Him — At 79, This Father Was Still Driving a School Bus

At 6:20 that morning, the bus barn door rolled up for the last time.

It made the same sound it had made every school morning for years: a long metal groan followed by the rattle of chains moving through the pulleys. Then cold gray light spilled across the concrete floor.

The smell of diesel and old vinyl seats filled the building. In the dispatch office, a radio played the farm report quietly.

Eleven yellow buses stood in a row, facing the door.

Number 7 was third from the left.

My father climbed into the driver’s seat just as he had done every school morning for the past three years. He grabbed the rail, placed one foot on the step, and pulled himself up with a small grunt.

I was sitting in the first seat behind him.

Dad had no idea why I had taken the morning off work.

I had told him I wanted to ride along one last time before he retired. I said I had always wondered what his route looked like.

He gave me a strange look when I mentioned it. He knows me well. I rarely take days off. I had worked at the Sioux County Treasurer’s Office in Orange City for nineteen years, and I could count my sick days on one hand.

Still, he did not ask questions.

“Bring a coat,” he said. “The heater’s slow.”

He wore the same tan zip-up jacket he had owned since before Mom died.

It was a Carhartt, faded almost white around the elbows and cuffs. One pocket had been torn and repaired with crooked brown stitches by Mom during the winter before she became ill.

Dad refused to wear anything else.

My husband, Kent, had bought him a new jacket two Christmases earlier. It was still sitting in its box in Dad’s closet, with the tags attached.

As always, Dad had his reading glasses in his chest pocket, a thermos of coffee in the cup holder, and his lunch packed in a brown paper bag.

He put the key into the ignition, checked his mirrors, and started the engine.

Then he turned around and looked at me.

“Last one, Jillie,” he said.

“Last one, Dad.”

His name is Harold DeBoer, although everyone calls him Hal. He was seventy-nine years old that morning.

For fifty-one years, he had farmed four hundred acres of corn and beans in Sioux County, Iowa. It was the same land his father had worked before him, and his grandfather before that.

He retired from farming at seventy-three and sold the land to a neighboring farmer. He deposited the money in the bank and made plans to take Mom to see the Grand Canyon.

She had always wanted to visit.

But that fall, she became ill with ovarian cancer. Fourteen months later, she was gone.

They never made that trip.

Now Dad was driving a school bus, and I knew exactly why.

He pulled Number 7 out of the barn and turned north toward Route 7.

I sat behind him with my hands folded in my lap, my heart pounding.

He had no idea what was waiting for him.

I had made sure of that.

The $38,000 Loan That Changed Everything

To understand why my seventy-nine-year-old father was still driving a school bus, you need to know about my older brother, Neal.

Neal is fifty-two, three years older than me. He has Dad’s height, Mom’s laugh, and a way of talking that makes people feel as if he is sharing a private secret with them.

He is a car salesman, and a very good one. He could sell a minivan to a man without children and still make the customer believe he had received a wonderful deal.

In 2019, Neal opened his own dealership, Hollandale Auto Sales, on Highway 75 near the south edge of Hollandale.

It was a small business with a white sales office, a flag on top, and balloons tied to the antennas of the cars outside.

The first two years went reasonably well.

Then 2022 arrived.

Interest rates increased sharply, and used car prices fell after their earlier rise. Neal had financed his inventory through a floor-plan loan, which allowed him to borrow money from a bank in Sioux Falls to purchase vehicles for his lot.

However, when the market changed, the cars became worth less than the money he owed on them.

He was suddenly about $60,000 underwater.

The bank wanted payment by June. Otherwise, it threatened to withdraw the credit line and take the inventory.

Neal did not tell anyone.

Not his wife, Shelly. Not me. Not even Dad.

Instead, one Sunday afternoon in March, he went to Dad’s house and sat down at the kitchen table.

I was not there. I learned what happened much later, directly from Dad.

Neal asked to borrow $38,000 from Dad’s retirement savings.

At the time, Dad had about $112,000 in savings. That money had come from selling the farm, but it had also been reduced by Mom’s medical bills and funeral expenses.

It was everything he had.

He received about $1,800 a month from Social Security and had no pension. Farmers do not usually retire with the kind of pension many other workers receive.

So $38,000 represented roughly one-third of everything Dad had saved.

Yet he agreed before Neal had even finished asking.

Neal wrote the loan agreement on a yellow legal pad.

It was a single page, written in his familiar blue ink, with the letters slanting toward the right.

It said:

I, Neal DeBoer, borrow $38,000 from my father, Harold DeBoer, to be repaid in full within two years, by March 31, 2024.

Neal signed it.

Dad signed beside him.

Two years.

That was the agreement.

The paper remained in Dad’s kitchen drawer, folded into thirds and resting on top of a pile of rubber bands.

It was the same drawer where Mom had kept twist ties, birthday candles, and the dishwasher warranty. Dad had never cleaned it out after she died.

He simply continued putting things inside.

In January 2025, I opened that drawer while looking for a pen.

I found the yellow paper, unfolded it, and read the agreement while standing at the kitchen counter.

The repayment deadline had passed almost ten months earlier.

I turned toward Dad.

“Has Neal paid any of it?”

Dad took the paper from my hand, folded it into thirds, and returned it to the drawer.

“Dad,” I asked, “has Neal paid you back one dime?”

He looked through the window above the sink, toward the bird feeder Mom had installed in 1987.

“He’s had a hard time,” he said.

“That isn’t what I asked.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“No,” he finally answered. “He hasn’t.”

Why a 76-Year-Old Farmer Went Back to Driving a Bus

Dad had driven a school bus once before, when I was growing up.

During the winter months, when farm work was slower, he drove Route 3 for the Hollandale Community School District. He did that for eight years, earning extra money and enjoying the time he spent with the children.

In 2022, the summer after he lent Neal the money, the district placed an advertisement in the Sioux County Index-Reporter.

It said school bus drivers were needed. Training would be provided, and applicants needed a commercial driver’s license with passenger and school bus endorsements.

Dad went to the bus barn and filled out an application.

“Just for something to do,” he told everyone.

He repeated those words at church, at the café, and at Casey’s when the woman behind the register asked why a man his age wanted to drive a school bus.

“For something to do,” he would say. “Gets lonely in that house. I like the kids.”

He traveled to Sioux City to renew his commercial driver’s license. He passed the written test and completed the road test in a borrowed bus.

He also passed the required Department of Transportation physical at a clinic in Orange City.

The district assigned him Route 7, the longest route.

It covered fifty-eight miles of gravel roads through the farmland north of Hollandale. There were thirty-one stops and forty-four children.

I knew his reason for returning to work was not simply boredom.

My job at the treasurer’s office gave me access to the county property tax records, and I had noticed changes in Dad’s payments.

In 2023, he paid his property taxes late and had to split the amount into two installments.

He had never paid late in his life. Not once during his fifty-one years of farming.

In 2024, his car insurance even lapsed for a month. I learned about it after the Iowa Department of Transportation sent him a letter that he left on his kitchen table.

Other changes were harder to miss.

He stopped buying the good coffee and switched to a large red can of the store brand. During winter, he turned the heat down to sixty-two degrees.

He also stopped joining his church friends for Thursday dinners.

The school district paid him $19.40 an hour. With two daily runs, one in the morning and another in the afternoon, he earned about $1,200 a month during the school year.

It helped, but it was not an easy way to spend retirement.

Dad Refused to Let Me Pay Neal’s Debt

My husband, Kent, and I eventually offered to help.

We sat with Dad at his kitchen table one evening in February. We had discussed the idea for weeks and knew it would require sacrifices.

We did not have $38,000 sitting in a bank account. Kent worked as a manager at the feed mill in Sioux Center, and I worked at the treasurer’s office. We had two children in college and a mortgage of our own.

Still, we had looked into taking a home equity loan.

We thought we could give Dad the money, allow him to stop driving the bus, and deal with Neal ourselves.

Dad listened without interrupting.

Then he shook his head.

“No,” he said.

“Dad…”

“I won’t take a cent, Jillie. Not from you. Not from Kent. You’ve got your own kids to look after.”

“Then let me talk to Neal.”

Dad looked at me with the expression he used to give me when I was twelve and wanted to fight a boy at school.

“No.”

“Dad, he owes you thirty-eight thousand dollars. You’re seventy-nine years old and driving a school bus in a blizzard. Somebody has to say something to him.”

“Nobody has to say anything,” Dad replied. “It was my money. It was my choice to lend it. And it’s his business to pay it back. Not yours.”

I tried again, but he placed his hand flat on the table.

“Jill,” he said. “Promise me you won’t fight your brother over this. I won’t have my kids fighting over money. Not after your mother.”

I sat quietly for a long time.

Then he asked again.

“Promise me.”

“I promise,” I finally said.

Dad had made his decision. He had lent Neal the money, and he wanted his son to repay it without turning the family against one another.

I respected that promise.

I did not call Neal. I did not visit his dealership or contact Shelly. I never mentioned the loan to anyone at church.

But I could not simply watch Dad struggle without doing anything.

I could not take away his debt or force Neal to pay it.

What I could do was make sure the people on Route 7 understood what Dad had given them for three years.

They knew him as Mister Hal.

They did not know the rest.

The Day I Realized Dad Needed to Stop Driving

In January, I saw something that frightened me.

I had driven to the bus barn on a Friday afternoon to bring Dad a casserole. I was sitting in my car when Number 7 returned from the afternoon route.

Dad parked the bus, set the brake, and reached for the door lever.

His hand shook so badly that he missed it.

He tried again.

This time, he managed to open the door.

He came down slowly, holding the grab rail, and waved when he noticed my car.

He did not know I had watched him struggle.

That night, I called Dr. Haverkamp, who had been Dad’s doctor for twenty years.

“I can’t tell you anything about his health, Jill,” she explained. “You know that. Privacy rules.”

“I understand. I just need to know whether he’s safe driving forty-four children on gravel roads.”

She remained quiet for a moment.

“He passed his DOT physical in August,” she said carefully. “He’ll need another one this August. Whether he passes depends on a lot of things.”

Then she added:

“Seventy-nine is old for that job. Hands get tired.”

In March, Dad finally told the district that this would be his last school year.

I did not hear it from him first.

The transportation director, Marv Schuiteman, told me after church one Sunday. He attended the same congregation.

“Your dad came in today,” Marv said. “He told me he’s done in May, on the last day of school.”

Marv shook his head.

“I’ve got nobody to replace him. Nobody wants Route 7. Fifty-eight miles of gravel.”

“Did he say why?”

“He said his hands are tired. He doesn’t want to be the old man who puts a bus in the ditch with kids on it.”

That night, I sat at my kitchen table with a yellow legal pad.

Like Neal’s.

Like the note in Dad’s drawer.

I made a list of everything the families on Route 7 should know about the man who drove their children to school.

They did not know he was seventy-nine.

They did not know he had farmed for fifty-one years or buried the woman he loved.

They did not know he drove that bus because he needed the money to pay his property taxes.

They only knew Mister Hal, the older man in the tan jacket who had picked up their children at the end of their lanes every morning for three years.

Thirty-One Phone Calls and Not One Refusal

I called Marv and asked for the Route 7 list.

At first, he hesitated.

Student privacy was important, and he did not want to share information without a good reason.

I explained what I hoped to do.

After a long silence, he agreed to give me the parents’ names and phone numbers.

“That’s all,” he said. “And don’t tell anybody where you got them.”

“I won’t.”

Then he added something unexpected.

“Jill, let me know when. I’d like to be there.”

Over the next two weeks in April, I made thirty-one phone calls.

One for every stop on Route 7.

I called in the evenings after supper. Kent sat beside me, handing me coffee while I explained my plan to each family.

I used almost exactly the same words every time.

“Hi. My name is Jill Vander Wal. My dad is Hal DeBoer. He drives your children on Bus 7. He’s retiring at the end of the school year.”

Then I paused.

“He’s seventy-nine years old, and I’d like to do something special for his last day.”

I did not mention the money.

I did not mention Neal.

I did not tell anyone about the loan or the financial problems Dad had been facing.

I simply told them that his final day was approaching.

The route included farmers, teachers, a pastor, and a woman who ran a daycare from her basement. There was also a Guatemalan family who worked at a local dairy and had lived in Sioux County for four years.

A young couple had recently purchased the old Hoekstra property. Another family included a great-grandmother raising two of her great-grandsons.

Not one family refused.

Every single one agreed before I had even finished explaining.

Several people cried during the calls.

“Seventy-nine?” asked the mother at Stop 9. “He helped my son with his shoe in the snow every morning in January. He got down on one knee in the slush. At seventy-nine?”

A father at Stop 22 told me:

“He’s never been late. Not once in three years. Not even during the blizzard in December.”

Another mother explained that her daughter called him Grandpa Bus because she had never known her own grandfather.

By the end of those conversations, I knew we had something special planned.

I just did not know how emotional the morning would become.

Stop 1: The First Surprise

Stop 1 was only a quarter mile from the bus barn.

It was the Groen family’s property, with a white farmhouse, a red barn, and a long gravel lane lined with cedar trees.

Dad turned off the county road and slowed down.

The sun was rising above the windbreak, casting gold and pink light across the fields. Frost covered the ground, and a meadowlark sang from a fence post.

At the end of the lane stood a mother in a green fleece jacket with her two children.

Becky Groen was thirty-five. She taught second grade at Hollandale Elementary, while her husband, Mark, farmed with his father.

Their daughter, Lily, was six and in first grade. Their son, Owen, was nine and in fourth grade.

The family was holding a pan of cinnamon rolls and a large bunch of lilacs.

The cinnamon rolls were still steaming beneath the plastic wrap covering the glass baking dish.

Lily held the flowers. They were so large that they almost covered her face.

Dad noticed them as he approached.

His foot came off the gas.

I watched his face change.

He lowered the red stop arm, turned on the flashing lights, and opened the door as he always did.

Then he stepped down to the bottom step.

“Well,” he said. “What’s all this?”

Lily moved forward and held out the lilacs.

“These are for you, Mister Hal,” she said. “Because it’s your last day.”

Dad stood with one hand on the grab rail and his tan jacket zipped up to his chin.

His eyes filled with tears.

He carefully accepted the flowers.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he said, his voice rough.

Becky offered him the cinnamon rolls.

“I’m sorry, Ha