Looking back: Transportation to Butler High School, 1930-58
| 28 Apr 2026 | 03:07
The Phillips family, Joe and Mae and their children Barbara, Gail, Joe Jr. and Bob, all bus drivers, are seen with their Phillips Transportation Company in 1958. (
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West Milford Mathews sisters, Verina and Anna, board a school bus for Butler High School in 1920 with student Fred Vreeland already on board with the driver. (
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In the 1920s the small number of West Milford rural elementary school graduates seeking a high school education could attend Butler High School along with others graduating from schools in eight or more other towns now part of Passaic, Morris and Sussex Counties. One close to Butler was Pompton Lakes where a high school did not open until 1932.
The school districts in the participating towns hired people with vehicles large enough to transport the small number of students needing transportation to Butler. For example, Roger Vreeland and Irving (Fred) Vreeland, brothers living in Macopin, and sisters Verina Agnes Mathews and Anna Elizabeth Mathews, living nearby in the Echo Lake community, were the only passengers for the daily trip to and from the high school in a small privately owned vehicle. Other similar small vehicles also transported West Milford students.
By 1950 school buses from towns still without their own high schools, arrived at Butler High School on Bartholdi Avenue and dropped students at the front door and picked them up at the day’s end to go home. Before Butler High School opened in 1903, birth year of class of 1921 graduate Verina Mathews Genader, the nearest high school was in Paterson. Some students living along rail lines traveled there by train.
In 1930, the Phillips family, of Hungarian descent, were established in Hewitt with a popular restaurant on Greenwood Lake Turnpike. Three children, Joseph (“Joe”), Anne and Frank, were in the family. Seeing transportation of students to Butler High as a way of earning money, Joe bought a blue squared-off cheesebox looking vehicle for $350 and signed a contract with the West Milford Board of Education to take students to the high school. The dilapidated bus was in such bad condition that Joe had to stop along the route between runs, making repairs to keep the vehicle operating.
From a humble business beginning, Phillips Transportation Company located next door to the restaurant, now Jessie’s Kettle, evolved. By 1958, the company estimated travel distance included 450,000 miles annually for school, camp, taxi and charter assignments. The busses delivered children to schools and special events for West Milford, Ringwood, Wanaque, Butler and Kinnelon Boards of Education. Charter work spread throughout the New York/New Jersey Metropolitan Area. There were 34 pieces of equipment in the fleet of busses.
When Joe started the transportation business, he had recently married Mae Gibbons of Ringwood. With his business going well, he decided to buy a second bus and Mae was soon behind the steering wheel taking students to school. Daughter Barbara, who as an adult became a teacher at Our Lady Queen of Peace Parochial School in Hewitt, was born to Mae on a day after she finished driving a bus run. Through the years the bus company became a family affair with Barbara and her siblings Joe, Jr., Bob and Gail driving. At the height of the Phillips Transportation business era, four mechanics and 26 drivers were part of the staff.
The family was very active in the West Milford Community. Joe Sr. was the township Justice of the Peace for ten years. During his days as a court judge he only sent one person charged with an offense to jail. The offender, a member of the medical profession, had refused to pay a $105 fine for procuring a New Jersey fishing license illegally.
