TEMPE, Ariz - Ever since Jermaine Bethea was young, he knew two core things about himself: He wanted to be a professional driver, and he loved to read.
"My first book report was on Lee Iaccoca," Bethea said. "You know, from Ford, remember him?"
And it was as a school bus driver in an underserved part of Tempe that Bethea realized how much he cared for his passengers.
"Some of these kids rode the school bus for me, " he recalIed. "I live on this block, so these kids are my neighbors; I see them everyday,' he added.
Kids who are as eager to learn as he was, but might be lacking the resources—especially at home.
A few years ago, on his own, he collected and handed out books at Christmas. It was about 300 books, but soon word got out as to what he was doing for the kids on his regular Tempe school bus route. Bethea's kind gesture was about to change his life.
He says the annual book drive took off.
"And it went from 300 to 500 to 1,000, doubling every year," he said.
Two years ago, he was hired on as a Valley Metro/First Transit bus operator. The company heard about Bethea's extraordinary efforts to see that the kids in the East Valley were expanding their literacy. They let him know that they wanted to pitch-in, too.
Over the past two months, Valley Metro/First Transit drivers, support staff, administration and a team of volunteers collected over 3,000 books. All the books were checked and sorted for content and age-appropriateness and loaded onto one of Valley Metro specially wrapped buses.
The Bethea Bookmobile, as it were, rolled into Thew Elementary and three other schools this week with all kinds of titles like "Princess and the Frog," "Chicken, Chicken, Duck," and "Scaredy Cats."
Bethea's book drive tries to find books for students from kindergarten all the way up to 7th and 8th graders. He worries that kids are paying too much attention to all the electronics around them and overlooking the beauty and wisdom found in the books at their local library.
Rather, he wants the kids to remember that through books—there is learning that happens well before all of our technology.
"The imagination comes from their own brain, especially when they read books without pictures," Bethea explained. He continued: "They have to be able to build a picture in their mind; that starts them on a path that will help them later on in life."
To contribute to Jermaine Bethea's future book drives contact Valley Metro.