Pupils Meet Their Traveling Pen Pal

For the past three months they wrote to him every week from an Oxnard classroom.

For the three months he wrote back to them, often twice a week, from Indian reservations in New Mexico, from snowy roads in Pennsylvania and from the rocky hillsides in Wyoming. He even sent them a treat--maple candy from New England.

On Wednesday, they finally met.

When Bob Christman drove his 48-foot tractor-trailer into the parking lot of Julien G. Hathaway Elementary School, 33 students from Conrad Saturnino’s first- and second-grade bilingual class greeted their pen pal with cheers.

Christman is one of 5,000 truckers who regularly correspond with more than 150,000 students through a program called Trucker Buddy International.

“This age, kids need all the help they can get,” said Christman, who lives in Escondido, when he is not at the wheel.

And their pen pal helps the students with geography, history and current events, Saturnino said.

Inside his classroom, pictures from all over the country are connected to dots on a map. Letters from Christman adorn every corner of the room. Some explain the shipping of frozen foods. Others describe the Maryland landscape. Others still relate the events of Gettysburg, Pa.

But on Wednesday, the students were most excited about Christman’s big rig. They played in the 102-inch deep-freeze trailer, jumped into the cab, lay on Christman’s bed and, again and again, blew the air horn.

Wearing his Hathaway Panthers blue sweatshirt, Christman stood grinning among the kids.

“As long as there is somebody that needs help, I’ll be there,” he said.