Bus driver who logged 3 million miles dies

HOULTON – As a bus driver, Leslie H. Van Tasel spent a chunk of his life shuttling people across the highways and byways of North America.

It is only fitting that in death, he will be taken to his final resting place in the vehicle in which he spent most of his life.

Van Tasel, who worked as a bus driver for different agencies for more than 40 years, died Monday at his home in Hampden. He was 70 years old.

The Houlton native logged more than 3 million miles during his career, the last of which he spent with Cyr Bus Lines in Old Town.

Through the years, he carried everything from luggage to legislators in his deluxe motor coach, and reached his 3-million-mile mark in his Cyr bus in 1999, just a few stop signs from his Hampden home.

As was his custom, he recorded the event in his handwritten log.

Local sports teams saw victory when they boarded the bus and saw Van Tasel behind the wheel, ready to take them to out-of-town games.

Former University of Maine women’s basketball Coach Joanne Palombo-McCallie told the Bangor Daily News in 1999 that the driver was “a good luck charm” for the team.

Van Tasel actually started driving motor coaches in 1960 for the now-defunct Bangor and Aroostook Railroad Bus Line. Before taking the wheel, he spent three years in the Army and about two years working at a Houlton hotel.

Cyr Bus took over the Bangor and Aroostook line in 1984 and brought Van Tasel along for the ride.

Dana Laughlin, a dispatcher at Cyr Bus Lines, said Tuesday that he began working with Van Tasel in 1987.

“He pretty much taught me everything I know,” he noted, pegging his colleague as a ‘very close friend.’ “I was very close to him, and so were a lot of his colleagues … We have a driver that is on his way from Georgia right now to attend the funeral. He was a very good man.”

As a tribute to their longtime friend and colleague, Van Tasel’s remains will be transported by a Cyr motor coach to Houlton on Thursday, where he is to be buried at Evergreen Cemetery.