Keith Martin also taught at G-A 35 years and drove a school bus 46 years
By Bruce Rolfe
A Galesburg-Augusta High School graduate who was asked to keep score at a boys varsity basketball game in 1983, remains in the same role 40 years later and still enjoys it.
Keith Martin, a former teacher and school bus driver in the Galesburg-Augusta School District, recalled he was driving the basketball team to a game in White Pigeon when he was asked to keep score for G-A.
“That’s when it all started, when no one showed up to do the books. So he (varsity basketball coach Bob Morgan) asked me to do it. I guess from then on I was doing it,” recalled Martin.
Martin, the Valedictorian of his class at G-A in 1962, graduated from Western Michigan University in 1966. He secured his first and only job as a teacher and school bus driver at G-A, finishing with 35 years as a teacher and 46 years as a school bus driver.
Because Martin often drove the basketball team to road games, serving as the scorekeeper fit nicely into his routine.
The longtime former teacher and bus driver said he has missed very few games over the 40 years he has been G-A’s scorekeeper.
Martin guesses conservatively, he has attended more then 800 G-A boys varsity basketball games as the scorekeeper. He said at least half of those games he also was the scorekeeper for the JV games, making it possible he has scored over 1,200 games since he started in 1983.
Martin said last season when G-A set the school record for wins in a season on the way to a SAC Valley Division championship, was a lot of fun for him. He can’t recall the years, but he remembers there were other years as well when G-A had a very strong basketball team, making those seasons fun as well.
“As the old saying goes, losing builds character and I tell people, I’m quite a character because I’ve watched a lot of losing,” said Martin, who also served as a volunteer at G-A taking tickets at home football and basketball games before he started as a regular scorekeeper and in the late 1970s video taped volleyball and basketball games.
“We went some years where they would only win one, two or three games. Two wins got to be kind of hard to take. But you do it for the kids and you like sports. That’s what keeps me doing it,” adds Martin.
Martin said as he closes in on his 80th birthday, he’s not sure how many more years he will be the team scorekeeper.
“I’m going to do it year by year. In the winter time, things do slow down a bit and it’s kind of nice to get out and I really would miss the connection with the school. Bus driving did that. Even though I wasn’t teaching between 2001 and 2012, bus driving kept me connected,” said Martin, who said he has also been a substitute teacher, worked on the district’s buses in the summer, and did maintenance and custodial work for the G-A School District over the years.
He admits people involved in the program make it easy for him to return each year.
“Brian Dolph (current G-A varsity boys basketball coach), he was one of my students. He was playing ball in high school and I was driving the bus quite often. He has always looked up to me and he makes me feel so appreciated. So I just kind of keep doing it,” said the veteran scorekeeper.
Martin said within a month of beginning his teaching career at G-A, he started driving a school bus for the local school district. He said at the time, it wasn’t uncommon for a teacher to also be a school bus driver. He would drive a morning route, teach during the day and drive the students home. Then a short time later he would drive G-A athletic teams to their games on the road. He wound up driving a school bus for G-A from 1966 to 2012.
In his 46 years of driving teams to athletic events, Martin has driven to over 600 athletic events, including some athletic trips when he drove without pay.
Martin said his interest in school buses goes back to when he was in high school when a friend and the bus supervisor at the time, Frank Piper, asked him to help. He said he started working for the school district when he was 16 years old.
“Quite often, when I was at the school, Frank would yell to me to bring the bus in. At 16 years old, now I’m driving the bus into the bus garage,” said Martin, who said he later was asked to drive the school bus from the bus garage to the school where the baseball team was waiting for a road game.
“I’ve been connected with bus driving since high school. And I rode the bus for 13 years,” adds Martin.
Loyalty to the school district runs in the family. Keith’s brother Dale, a 1964 G-A graduate, taught 1 year at Kent City and 34 years at G-A. He drove a school bus at G-A for 44 years and has also been the G-A football teams’ statistician since 1957, serving in the role as team statistician for over 600 games.
Since he started keeping track of driving records in the 1980s, Martin said out of 450 athletic runs from 1982 to 2012, he drove the bus 28,329 miles. He adds because he did not keep track of mileage for a significant period of time before he started a journal in the 1980s, the number of athletic events he attended and miles he drove as the bus driver, are much higher.
“I don’t know why I started writing everything down. It just kind of happened. You’re turning in your mileage at the end of the day (as a bus driver) and I kept a journal. I wrote down where I drove. I can go clear back in the 1990s and you name a Friday night and I can tell you which bus I drove, where I went and the number of miles,” said Martin, who was inducted into the 2024 G-A Athletic Hall of Fame as a Special Contributor in January.
Martin recalled there were some years when the school district faced budget challenges he drove the bus without being paid. He adds there were other years where he just charged the district for actual driving time but did not charge for his time during the game.
Martin admits driving a school bus in the winter has brought some weather related challenges.
“It seems like whenever I drove to Delton, there always was a heavy snow or ice storm. I can remember Delton this one night, it kind of sticks out in my mind, it happened to be that way,” recalled Martin.
The life long Galesburg resident adds there was one period of time when the school district faced budget challenges and asked the bus driver to drop the team off to its destination, and return back to G-A to avoid having to pay the bus driver while the game was being played. That forced Martin to drop the team off before a road game, bring the bus back to the district, get into his own vehicle and drive back to where the team was playing so he could perform his scorekeeping duties.
Keith’s wife, Carolyn, is a Kalamazoo Central High School graduate and also taught most of her entire career in the G-A School District as a first grade, fifth grade and middle school English teacher. The couple met in a class at Western Michigan University.
Some teachers entering the work force out of college use their first few jobs as a resumé builder and move on to larger school districts where they can make more money, but Martin said he always saw himself teaching his entire career at G-A.
“I didn’t see any reason why I would ever leave. Carolyn and I both have had a really great life being teachers and being involved in all the stuff at the school,” said Martin, who taught fifth grade his entire career at G-A.
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