ROY WINSTON, 72, A CHARMER WHO "HAD LOTS OF OPINIONS"
-Craig Welch, Seattle Times
July 5, 2003

Roy Winston could often be found in the stands, cheering volleyball players or a basketball team as if the kids were his own.

But at the buzzer, Mr. Winston would disappear from the gymnasium, plop his small frame behind the wheel of his baby — an aging, immaculate charter bus — and ferry the players back to school.

Mr. Winston, a bus driver who loved nothing more than chatting up a captive audience, died June 24 of brain cancer. He was 72.

Mr. Winston was raised in Louisiana, one of 10 children born to a hard-slogging farm hand who stacked lumber when not putting in time at the sawmill. He enlisted in the U.S. Army shortly after World War II, before following a brother to Seattle's Central District.

He married, and landed a job at the U.S. Postal Service, but his entrepreneurial spirit soon got the better of him. Noticing that friends always hit him up to borrow his small truck for help carrying furniture, he decided to start a moving company.

"It started off more as a hobby, but he was a scrapper," said his daughter, Denise Johnson. "Being a black businessman back then in Seattle was difficult, and he had a lot of setbacks, but he liked to go against the odds."

He had his father's work ethic and was a loving parent who worked three jobs to ensure his children a brighter future.

And Mr. Winston was a charmer. He worked back channels, talked to other companies, and in 1961 Winston Movers became one of the few moving companies in Seattle at the time owned by a black man.

With a full-time job, a family and a side business, Mr. Winston was always on the go. A tinkerer who could rebuild a Volkswagen or a table saw, he had a house designed and built in Leschi.

But what he loved was driving — the bigger the rig the better — and passing the time filling his passenger with current events.

"Talking is what he was known for, and he had lots of opinions," Johnson said, laughing. "If you thought you were going to get away with a little 'Hi, how ya doing?' you had another thing coming."

When his wife got involved in his daughter's drill team, Mr. Winston, not wanting to be left out, had a brainstorm. He flew to Florida, bought a charter bus and drove it back. He'd take the girls to and from their meets.

"He loved that bus — could tell you everything about it," said his brother, Samuel Winston. "He kept it all nice and clean, inside and out."

He took church groups to functions, used the intercom system to crack jokes and carted riders to Reno, Nev., for gambling outings. If a group needed a ride and he was mid-dinner, he'd finish up and jump behind the wheel.

When Garfield High School struggled to arrange rides for its athletic teams, it hired Mr. Winston. Finally, the kids could escape the ugly yellow "cheese buses."

"It was this older-style thing, the kind you would expect to take on a long journey through the South in the 1960s, when men wore porkpie hats and women clutched their purses," said Jack Hamman, Garfield's assistant volleyball coach. "In the back he had chairs that faced one another and a card table. The kids loved being on that goofy bus."

Where other drivers dropped students at games and returned to pick them up, Mr. Winston headed straight for the stands and cheered like a fan. He was so gracious — and commanded such respect — that older students made sure freshmen knew to thank Mr. Winston after every ride. Many of them made a point to attend his memorial service.

"Think about that," Hamman said. "How many of us even remember our bus drivers? He was something special."

Mr. Winston was preceded in death by his wife, Lois L. Winston, and is survived by his daughters, Addie Lee Broussard, of Rayville, La., Denise, of Seattle, and son Donald Winston, of Seattle; four grandchildren; and brothers Elonzo, Samuel, Robert Jr., Lemmie, Abe and Howard Winston, of Seattle; Willie Winston, of Illinois; and sisters Otis Winston, of Ohio, and Anna Winston, of Seattle.