Former Bus Driver Gets More Mileage From Old Route

For his 60th birthday Thursday, Henry Ross took a trip down memory lane--the bus route he drove from Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles for eight years.

But this time, the retired bus driver ran it.

As Ross stretched out under blue skies at 2nd Street and Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica, he pointed to his left foot. In 1979, a bus ran over it. “That’s what’s going to take me all the way downtown,” he said.

Doctors told him he would always walk with a limp, but he proved them wrong after training on sand and then hard surfaces. “You’d be surprised at what you can do if you apply yourself,” he said.

Ross, who is 6-foot-1 and 189 pounds, finished in about 3 1/2 hours. Four friends rode along on bicycles.

Obviously in good health, Ross lifts weights and runs six days a week. “This is what you can look like at 60,” he said proudly. He retired from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority last year and now works at Sportsmen’s Lodge Hotel in Studio City.

Wearing black running shorts and a blue cap over his short gray hair, Ross forged along the palm tree-lined sidewalks of Wilshire Boulevard, past men pushing shopping carts, workers sweeping and hosing sidewalks and residents walking their dogs.

“When I look at it now, I wonder how I got the bus down Wilshire Boulevard,” he said, noting how tricky it is to maneuver a large vehicle in heavy traffic.

“I was glad I was running rather than driving a bus,” he said after he finished. It always seemed like a miracle, he said, that he could make three round trips a day without putting a scratch on his bus.

Running past his previous bus stops reminded him of certain regular riders that he got to know.

As Ross approached downtown, “my mind started to float to Little Tokyo,” where he used to live, he said.

Ross first ran along his bus route 20 years ago. “Everyone can drive the 83 line. I wanted to run it.”

Longtime friend Alvin Kelley greeted Ross at his destination, the bus depot. “You look like you could do it again,” Kelley said. They joked about how quickly Ross ran--even passing a couple of buses that made limited stops. “My bus was never late,” Ross said.

“I feel good,” he said as he caught his breath. “I’ll do it again on my 70th birthday.”