It’s probably safe to assume a bear never gets lost in the woods, but one Church Point High School Battling Bear was recently found about 70 miles from home.
In mid-April a company was doing clearing work on property in Beauregard Parish when workers came across a school bus with “Church Point Bears” and a bear painted on the sides. The license plate is dated 1968. Photos of the bus were posted on Facebook, with the owner’s permission, by one of the workers, Julio Cazarez, of Arnaudville.
“Once we went through the area, we saw it,” Cazarez said. “It was completely surrounded by trees. There were no trees in it or on it, but it was pretty well buried back there in the woods. We had to move it to finish our work.”
Cazarez said he has family and friends from Opelousas and Church Point, and he hoped that some of them would enjoy seeing the photos.
Frank Olivier of Ragley, whose family owns the property and the seemingly wayward Bear Bus, said, “I have heard so many different stories over the years of how the bus got there, but there is one that I have heard from numerous people and it makes the most sense.”
Olivier said the likely story of how the bus came to be on his family’s property started long before his birth in 1982.
“My grandmother and grandfather would know the story, but they are deceased,” Olivier said. “There were so many stories about how the bus got here — even ghost stories.”
Olivier’s family acquired the wooded property where the bus is located around 1983.
“I only ever knew the previous property owner as Mr. Bang,” Olivier said. “Mr. Bang knew someone from the school in Church Point. I don’t know if he was the janitor or the bus driver or what, but he brought the broke down bus to the woods. The property was more open back then. The man planted watermelons out here, and he came up here on weekends to tend his watermelons and stayed in the bus.”
Olivier said bus has no engine, windows or wheels.
“When we were kids, we made it a camp — probably when we were in the fifth or sixth grade,” he said. “My grandpa had put new carpet in his house, so we put the old carpet in the bus and clear plastic wrap over the windows.
“My kids love the bus. If they invite over a friend who has never seen the bus, they want to go out there and show it to them.”
Olivier said he wished he would have thought to take photos of the bus before the trees were removed, but he said he plans to put the bus back in the woods so his children can continue to enjoy taking friends to see the old vehicle.
While the wheels on the bus don’t go round and round anymore, the photos of the vehicle took a few Church Point residents for a trip down memory lane.
Former CPHS coach Bob McBride said, “I think this was the school’s second bus. We had an old bus to begin with, and we sold it to buy that one. The first one didn’t have a luggage rack on it. We did auction a bus in the Quarterback Auction, and I think this was the one.
“The next one (bus) was the Pumpkin,” McBride continued, laughing. “It wasn’t quite yellow. It was more a shade of orange.”
McBride, 88, graduated from CPHS in 1951, and he returned to the school in 1965 to coach. McBride recalled driving the the bus to Rayne, Crowley and Lawtell for football, basketball and track events and parking it on south Wimerberly Street near Wilfred Theriot’s house.
The most memorable thing McBride remembered about the bus was the trouble he had getting it started.
“I would put it in gear and get out and pull it with my car,” he said. “Dean (McBride’s late wife) would pop the clutch and crank it as I pulled it.”
McBride said the school kept the Pumpkin longer than the bus found on Olivier’s property because the Pumpkin was purchased brand new.
McBride’s daughter, Jill McBride Myers also remembers the Pumpkin and its recently rediscovered predecessor.
“On Friday afternoons, my dad would drive the bus home for the weekend, and we would sweep it out and play in it,” Myers said. “I have lots of memories on that bus.”
Myers also said the bus constantly broke down.
“My dad would tow it with my mom’s car, and she did not like that,” Myers said, laughing.
Current CPHS Principal Lee Ward and CPHS Class of 1974 graduate said the year on the bus’s license plate lines up with the start of the Booster Club auction in the mid 1960s.
“They started off with bakes sales around 1966,” Bellard said. “I think this was the second football bus. It was sold, and the money from the bake sales helped buy a new bus.”
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