Most Hopkins students have seen her, but few know her story. Usually, Angeline Marks, 57, is busy driving Hopkins students of all affiliations, and even professors and doctors through Baltimore between the Homewood and medical campuses, but last week, The News-Letter was able to speak with her during her lunch break. Marks is a JHMI shuttle bus driver who currently drives the 7AM-2PM shift. Though she has only been on the Hopkins route for about a year, she has been employed by Veolia transportation services for six years. She said the main reason she loves her job is because of the people that she’s able to meet.
“Oh I love them, I love all the different languages they say, they say thank you and good bye and everything and I learn a lot from them. They’re funny and I like that,” she said of the students.
“I like the way they speak their languages, I like to hear them talk, you’ve got different kinds of nationalities from all over the world, I like that. Usually they be sleepy and tired, I be looking at them in the mirror, during a certain time of the year and I know they be studying hard.”
She adds that she’s a people person, and that she likes her job because it allows her to talk with a lot of students.
“Yeah, I talk to the students, I ask them where they’re from, if they like Johns Hopkins, and they act like they be studying so hard, a lot of times they be so tired, but I try to make them laugh and stuff.”
She also enjoys her job because of the courteousness most students show towards her.
“They let me know [that they appreciate me] by saying thank you and good bye and have a good weekend, they lets me know that when they get on and off,” she said.
Marks was also adamant that though it might seem like her job could get boring, driving the same route every day, it was because it allowed her to speak with so many different kinds of individuals. Some of the students speak with her while she drives, and most recently, a girl showed her pictures from Halloween where she was dressed as Michelle Obama, which amused Marks.
She’s able to do a lot of listening and watching as a bus driver as well, and she’s been able to make friends with a couple regulars on her routes.
“There’s a lady that comes on right there to get coffee. She lives right there at University One, she comes out and gets on the bus and gets off at Barnes and Noble. She say ‘Thank you honey have a good weekend’. She comes and go get her coffee made and she smokes all the time. I get on her case about that all the time... I haven’t seen her lately while I’ve been on this run, but on my other run she used to be down there faithfully sitting on the bench.”
Marks is a family-oriented woman at heart, and when talking about herself and her job, she is quick to mention her son William. Her son, who suffered from sickle cell anemia, was ill for a while before he passed away last October at the age of 21. Before his illness became too debilitating and forced him to drop out, he was a civil engineer who attended Morgan State University.
“I like to see what the students are doing out in school, it reminds me of my son who was in college . . . I like to see kids with a future,” she said, looking away for a second.
She also discussed the difficulty in having a son who was young and also ill, describing it as “a battle” to have to care for him but to also hold a job.
“I used to go to work and then get off and go to see him. Most of the time he was home, after he started getting sick, he went over to Johns Hopkins and after that they sent him over to Mount Washington [for hospice care].”
Though he died after two weeks in the hospice, Marks said that she was grateful to Hopkins for all they did to help him.
“Yea, and I miss him. I drive by there and think about him, I see some of the nurses who took care of them and they always give me a hug and say they miss William,” she added.
However, William had a young son before he died, and Marks said that it’s her grandson that brings her happiness nowadays.
“I love my grandbaby...he keeps me going, he’s my strength,” she said. Marks takes care of her grandson every other weekend, and though she said she would never be allowed to bring him on her bus route with her, she said he loves sitting in her truck and looking out the window when she drives him to lunch at McDonald’s and to the barber to get his hair cut.
“He looks so much like William, acts like William, but he keeps me going, he’s my strength, my grandson,” she said.
Though she was born in West Baltimore, before Marks became a shuttle driver she had been living in South Carolina for about 20 years and had been doing a few different jobs. For the first 10 years of her time in there, Marks worked on a tobacco farm, picking and cropping the plant while on a tractor and drying it before it was sold to cigarette companies. After that, she worked in a few different garment making factories sewing collars and sleeves on shirts. She moved back up to Baltimore in 2004, bringing her son William with her. She said that her son missed South Carolina and was constantly asking when they would go back.
“I said I don’t know about that,” she said, sighing.
Though she grew up in Baltimore, she spent such a long time in South Carolina that when she returned, Baltimore had transformed as a city.
“It’s a change, it’s from another era from the time I grew up, you see all the things that have happened. Now when I get off I do what I have to do, and then I stay in other than that, but Baltimore is pretty cool, besides the crime. You’ve got the Inner Harbor, I remember when it was nothing but banana boats bringing fruit when I was a child and to see it branch out into a harbor the way it down there now, it’s very nice.”
Overall, Marks said that out of all the jobs she’s held so far, she enjoys her position as a shuttle driver the best.
“I like it, it’s transportation, transporting people, it’s much better. Like I said I’m a people person, I like to meet people. And there aren’t any gnats or anything,” she said, referring to the many insects she would often have to deal with during her time as a tobacco harvester.
During her hour lunch break, Marks often either eats in her bus or sits with the church pastor at the Interfaith center. She said that though she was raised a Baptist, she doesn’t attend church regularly anymore.
“I keep god in my heart though, because I know there is a god. A lot of people don’t believe in god but I do, because I know what he’s done for me, and what he’s done for my son. I believe, there’s got to be,” she said.
She glances at her watch.
“Oh almost time for me to go,” she said, wrapping up her hot dog and chips. As she made her way through the narrow bus aisle, she summed up herself in a few words.
“I love people, I can get along with anybody. If you see me sad or not saying anything, then you know I’m sick,” she said definitively as she sat down and buckled herself into the driver’s seat to begin her afternoon run.
