Revisiting Miss Estella's Brilliant Bus

age of Mrs Stella's story is incredible. She was born in the thirties, grew up during the Dust Bowl, became a teacher, and in her seventies spent her entire retirement to build a mobile learning lab equipped with computers so kids and adults in her community who didn't already have access to computers could get online. And she was still driving that bus when we talked last year as part of my birthday fundraiser for Estella's Brilliant Bus. Now. I first heard her story when she was featured in a

Super Bowl ad during the Super Bowl. She quickly became one of my heroes and as our producer and I can tell you I've probably never been more nervous to speak to a guest, Bridget. I have seen you prepared to interview some badass women who are like not to be fooled with and H. And I've also seen you prepared to go on talk radio programs with like conservative assholes who are like hostile to your point of view. And I have never seen you be more nervous than

when you interviewed Miss Estella. Oh. I mean, the woman is an icon, She's a legend. And first of all, I mean just being a black woman who grew up in the South. When you're talking to a black elder, there is a whole different level of respect and scrutiny that you need to show. Notice how only your part of miss Stella as miss O Stella um. And so that was one reason why I was just right off the bat, very nervous. You know, this is this is the older in our community, and so you really have

to show a certain level of deference and respect. And you know, if I was interviewing somebody like Mark Zuckerberg, I could do that in my sleep. Interviewing miss O Stella was a completely different story. And also just the fact that I get very nervous when I'm interviewing somebody that I deeply respect, and I so deeply deeply respect miss A Stella and her work and her legacy and just the incredible life that she lived, and I felt such a deep responsibility to do her story justice because

her story is incredible. You know, this is somebody who really lived an important life. So yeah, I was I was pretty nervous. What is it about her story that you respect so much and that inspires so much in you? What a good question. I think one of the things that struck me is reading her obituary. Her family talked about how a lot of people thought that her making the Brilliant Bus was her second act, but it was

really more like her third or fourth act. And so I just really respect that she was someone who never felt like she was too old to start something that she wanted to do, never felt like she was too old to impact her community, never felt like she was too old to really like live her legacy, And so I just respect her story so much. Yeah, you gotta

respect and love that third act. Mrs Stella's family says they're going to try to keep her Brilliant Bus alive to continue connecting residents of all ages to vital technology, and you can go to Tangoti dot com slash bus to donate. Mrs Stella leaves behind four children, three of whom were educators like their mama. Thirteen grandchildren, three great grandchildren, and countless others that she touched myself very much included

Mrs Stella, you are an icon. Let's listen to her story. So, in true nerd fashion, I have a birthday on Pie Day this weekend on March fourteenth, and to celebrate, I wanted to honor one of my heroes, A Stella pih Frome. You might have seen her story in a Super Bowl commercial in Mrs Stella spent fifty years in public education, serving low income kids in a Title one school. Now, while teaching, she saw that many of her kids couldn't always do their assignments because they didn't have access to

a computer or reliable internet at home. So she created A Stella's a Brilliant Bus to bring the computers to them. My name is A Stella and the Uno the creator and founder of A Stella's Brilliant Bus. The Stellar's Brilliant Bus is a mobile learning center where we provide education and technology but underserved community to children and underserved communities, and that's what we've been doing since we started. But realizing that the children have other siblings and other realities

and need our service. We have expanded our service to include not just children, but adults in unserved communities. That's what the bus is all about. Yes to tech center, it's the learning center, but we use above to provided technology to accomplish the mission that we set out to

do in the communities. After retiring in her seventies, Mrs Stylla spent her life savings on a bus that she turned into a mobile learning center to help bridge the digital divide and help bring technology to the communities can meet it most. Knowing that I was getting older and I was pretty much I would say we all over seven through one, I knew that if I was going to do anything other than work at the school, I

needed to look at what that option might be. And when the hurricane devastated other people in New Orleans and other places, it's shopping my ideal about going out into communities and doing something that I thought would be worth while. I had the idea of creating something to think out in the community, but put it on hold because I wasn't really sure what I was gonna do. But after that, okay,

and I thought about this is it. According to Pew, a quarter of lower income teams don't have access to a home computer, and one quarter of Black youth that they often or sometimes can't do their homework assignments because they don't have a reliable internet access or a computer. Compare that to just white youth. This is sometimes called the digital divide and it presents a big barrier to

kids in all communities being able to succeed. I figured if I could create a project that I could take I didn't the community because we knew that this was age of technology, and I knew from working with Type in One schools if there was that did you do divide? So I wanted to keep that going because I know if about community is a concern that we served the children that and the Tide One School was missing at home the technology. Mrs Stella was relentless and she also

dreamed big. Her first thought was to use her old minivan and she even told her the idea of trying to get her hands out. I sent my truck to turn that into a mobile computer lab. So in putting my ideas together, the first thing I asked myself how can I provide technology through these undeserved communities? And I've sto thinking about it a while. I knew that the band that I had would not be enough because it was just not big enough. The third more than four

or five children at one time. It's that mini. So I decided, after thinking about it, what is it that I would be comfortable with? Knowing that I didn't have a lot of money? But how can I make it work? Because I was of the fail you, it's not an option mindset, so I knew what I was going to do had to be successful because free of you was not an option. So I thought about the man and I ruled that out. I thought about her, say my truck, and I said, I can't drive that on the back

went out during my lifetime. But then the bus came up. I said that I use a bus. I have a lot more space, and of course I can drive a bus because I learned to drive a bus through my childhood because my dad had no boys and six girls and I was the only girl that was brave enough learn how to drive the truck and the bus. So I figured I could say the money if I got if I used a bus, because that was something that I could drive when I needed. So I grabbed some

paper and pilsu games. Startled drawing figure out what I wanted to do, and started working on it. And it was an idea that I put together on paper, and then I was successful in lifting that idea of the paper and put it into reality. I didn't know that you actually drive the bus yourself. My goodness, you said going to drive the bus. And when we first got started, I drove the bus and most of those videos that's on the website or on YouTube, and they didn't believe

I could drive the bus either. It all made me drive the bus. You'll see me driving. I'm driving the bus, but I have someone to help me drive the bus. The producers didn't want that. They wanted need to drive the bus. That gets to prove that in my age, that I could drive that bus. Do you mind me asking how old you are? You don't have to say

if you don't want to, no, I'm eighty four. It was Mrs Stella's father who instilled in her the importance of helping others and sharing with your community, even if you didn't have a lot. My father was a Micrid contractor, and we traveled from Florida to New York the nineteen years the Harvest produced Thinking beings one but davies and things of that sort. And my dad was a very kind hearted man who really enjoyed getting and helping people,

even though he was a poor man. And we would travel up, not leaving Florida during the month of May mid May, and sometimes come we will come back in October. Because if you don't have any skills, then you have to do unskilled laboring jobs. And that was what was going on with my parents. Need one of them ever finished elementary school, so they didn't have skills, but they were very smart and hard working people. Growing up poor

in a government housing project. Mr Stella knew that not much was expected of her, but the power of community helped her subvert those a lot of expectations. We lived in a government project. Uh. And if you have seen the documentary Harvests of Shame by Edward our Moral, when they predicted that we probably would ever get out of that project, you just stuck there for life, and that less than thirty percent of us but ever get out

of there. Uh. And the smaller percentage of us would probably not making the college because he would be stuck in that rut and that government project. But I'm proud to say yeh. Many of us who went to school out there, graduating from high school with the college and obtain advanced degrees. Now in the project where I lived, it was the ideal of it takes a village to raise a child. And all of us are poor all about most about parents world working for away from the

in the in the fields. But there was always someone home in that project during that day and would look out for each other, and we got long we're doing today. We could go to that neighbor's house and they'll give us some bread and cheese, or bread and mayonnaise. Were bread and peanut butter. So it's one of those things where really actually helped raise a child, and we learned to share whatever we had, but every sources that we had,

so we just grew up with that mentality. Do you feel that that's why you're inspired to give back to the kids in your community with the bus to make sure that they have the same kind of village that helped raise you and your sisters. I'm sure it had something to do with and that experience is a thing would grants form me into the person who I am today,

giving and sharing with other people who need us. The most Now, summers can worsen the divide between low income kids and kids whose families can afford things like summer camp. The learning loss that students sometimes experience when they're out for summer break is sometimes called the summer slide, and a John Hopkins study found that by ninth grade, the summer slide makes up for two thirds of the reading achievement gap between low income kids and middle income kids.

Chicking back this, Mrs Stella spent her summers taking kids on educational trips in her bus. She self financed them, looking for deals on hotels and meals so the trips wouldn't cost the families a dime. But then COVID hit and now her bus is in park. We would go and go into communities. We have worked with churches, smers, schools in Gunny organizations and we would just schedule our activities and we would go out in the community and

make things happen. There was no problem when COVID came alone. Everybody was afraid of a body, so business was shutting down. People were afraid of their children and other family members, and of course you know they were dying. So we adhere to what the community was doing when they shut down business. Since we parked the bus and now we have two buses now and we would take these kids across country to travel the Freedom Trail and also get

more exposure to technology, education and technology. And we would get on the road for ten or three of days with one hundred teenagers going across country to get more exposure because many of the kids who living those loops and communities, they don't get to go to town, so they speak because sometimes their parents can't afford to take them. Many of them are working or they just can't afford

of expense that going along with it. So three years in a row, I was very successful in taking the kids across the country for ten or twelve days, giving them the exposure and not having to charge them one cent. And then we we were able to expose them. We tecknowledging and address the summer flide. But this past your nine we did not because we were right, I'm going

into involved with COVID. So again we didn't want to be responsible or exposing kids to COVID because they're just learning a little bit more about it, but they didn't know anything about it. They didn't know very much. I would say about it, so we just decided we'll just stay in close up like the other business until they find out more. How people, and I'm talking about adults and their children say from the runa virus COVID has only shown how important it is for all kids to

have access to technology. If low income kids didn't have computers or reliable internet at home before, how are they supposed to keep up with remote learning during COVID. Pew actually found that one in five parents with kids at home because of COVID say it is very or somewhat likely that their kids won't be able to complete schoolwork because they don't have access to a computer or internet.

It's so important to support community leaders like missus Stella, who won't let a generation of kids get left behind because of their economic circumstances. In miss A Stella's community, they looked after little ones like a village, sharing what little they had with one another. She's a living legend, and her work and legacy is a testament to the fact that anyone can make a lasting difference. Miss Stella, what a life you have lived? What a what an inspiration?

What do you want to say if somebody is out there and they think gosh. I want to make a difference, but I don't know what I can do. What's your message to them? Because you've made you're one woman and you've made such a big difference on your community. What is your message to other people who might be listening, who want to do what you're doing and make a difference in their communities? Don't let age up here with

your dreams. One thing and the other thing is if you can believe it and willing to work, you can achieve it. I so appreciate it. I appreciate you. I appreciate all that you do. Ms A Stella. You are an icon friend of Oprah Winfrey, the board in my book, Oh my good, have a book out there. Let's go the legacy of a humble Black woman from fear to back to it to a brilliant boss. It's on the

website too. For my birthday, I hope you'll consider supporting miss O Stella's vision for the future by making a donation to Estella's Brilliant Bus. If you're able, go to tangodi dot com slash bus to donate. That's Tangoti t A n g O t I dot com slash bus. If you're moved by Mrs Sella's story and want to donate, but aren't in a position to do so right now, Hit me up at Hello at tangoi dot com and we'll donate in your honor. We keep us safe and we keep us strong, so let's all keep striving to

be the change we want for our communities. Just like miss O Stella, you are a living legend, such an inspiration to to me personally. When I saw your Super Bowl ad, I cried before we spoke. Today, I watched it again and I had the same feeling. There's just something so beautiful about what you've done for your community. So I'm so I'm so very grateful for you and then doing everything that I could do make it down

the down here. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi, You can reach us at Hello at tang godi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tang godi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget tod It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato

is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.