Wendy Kuhlman: The Transporter

A little girl nervously climbs into the dark navy van with golden letters on the side spelling out, ‘Grand Haven Area Public Schools’. Seat belts are attached to the gray polyester seats, unlike the familiar blue leather of the normal school bus seats she’s been used to. As she buckles up, a smiling face turns around to greet her.

Van driver Wendy Kuhlman, or Miss Wendy, as the displaced children who she takes to school call her, has been driving the homeless van 200 miles a day, for five years.

Whenever a new student rides her van for the first time, she tells them the story of when she herself, was once homeless and living in her car. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Kulhman brought her son and daughter to Pottawattamie Park for a picnic. They were always curious about who lived in the house on the other side of the fence next to their picnic spot.

Today, Kuhlman lives in that house.

“I get goosebumps every time I tell that story,” Kuhlman said. “I try to tell the kids, ‘You may not know where your life is going now, but it may be right next to you.’”

Kuhlman became homeless when she grew sick and had to be hospitalized. This caused her to lose her job and condo. When faced with the option to move hours away to her family’s house, or stay near her kids who lived with her ex-husband, she chose to live in her car, near her children.

“That’s why I took the job, because I’ve been there,” Kuhlman said. “I know what they feel like. I kind of know what they’re going through, even though every situation is different.”

The five children that ride her van have had to move out of the district after losing their housing. There are four other vans, but Kuhlman has the longest route, driving all the way to Fennville and back through Holland to make sure these students get to school on time. She then drops them all off at the end of the day.

“It’s a very rewarding role, because sometimes they just need someone to listen to them and understand what they’re going through,” Kuhlman said. “It’s very rewarding. The kids are very grateful for their ride because what Grand Haven does, is they provide the ride to keep their schooling stable because their housing is not at the moment.”

The students who ride Kuhlman’s van range from kindergarten to high school age and go to Ferry Elementary School, Lakeshore Middle School and Central High School.

“They do not miss school at all,” Kuhlman said. “Nobody misses my van, very rarely the other ones either.”

Kuhlman heard about the job through her friend who was a bus driver. She told her that it would be the perfect job for her after experiencing homelessness herself.

“It made me a better person,” Kuhlman said. “I had a good job, a condo, I had a great life. It made me appreciate life every single day, and what other people are going through or may be going through. I’m a giving person anyways, but it made me more giving.”

When Kuhlman was first hired, there were only two vans. The amount of children needing the van has grown, as they’ve expanded to four. In Kuhlman’s opinion, they could have used five or six vans in the past couple of years.

“It’s not widespread talked about because families don’t talk about it, because a lot of times they’re embarrassed or feel bad,” Kuhlman said. “The children don’t talk about it openly a lot because they also feel bad. A lot of those times, a parent has lost a job or gotten divorced. Some of them have struggled with alcohol or drugs. We also have picked up foster kids who have been put in a foster home. They also ride the homeless van if it’s a temporary situation as well.”

Although all of these students come from different backgrounds, they share similar worries.

“I think the common thing is they’re not sure where they’re going to end up, or where they’re going to live or if they’re going to be permanently out of their school district the following year, because it ends up where their housing ends up,” Kuhlman said. “So a lot of them just don’t know where their lives are going to end up or where they’re headed.”

The 2016-2017 school year began with 187 living without permanent housing.

“A lot of us are not aware how many homeless people are out there in Grand Haven, and every situation is different,” Kuhlman said. “There’s not one that’s just like the other one either.”

Kuhlman is glad the van program exists, for the sake of the children.

“They would be jumping from school to school to school and never making any true friends, and never being able to put their feet in and dig into their education goals,” Kuhlman said. “They would be lost, they truly would be. My kids tell me thank you every day when I drop them off. It’s crazy, but they do.”

The goal of the van program is to keep students’ lives stable in hopes of them re entering into housing into the same district as their school and friends.

“Their schooling, all these students, I haven’t met a student who didn’t care about their grades or didn’t care about anything when they were homeless,” Kuhlman said. “They’re goal-oriented and they want to be able to get through those goals.”