Spaniolas Campaign For My Favorite Candidate Tonight

August 22nd, 2006 | by christine |

Someone brought an old bumper sticker to the Shiawassee Dems August meeting tonight.


Bus Spaniola
Francis R “Bus” Spaniola


Carol Spaniola
Carol Spaniola, Shiawassee Dems Party Chair

Francis R “Bus” Spaniola was our State Representative out here for a long time … I don’t remember how long, but he retired in 1992.

Bus had one of those careers that might be easy to overlook, but few legislators have done as much as Bus has to touch each of our lives:

Some of his accomplishments:

  • He sponsored the law creating the Michigan cancer registry … I don’t know the name of it … his son came home from Harvard and said “dad, they have this cool cancer database in Massachusettes…”
  • He sponsored the bill that put the numbers on the back of semi trucks / trailers. The number corresponds to an entry in a database that identifies the contents of the trailer … useful in the event of an accident spill.
  • He fought the battle to identify and clean up PBB contamination. One of this concerns during this time was that “in 20 years, we’re going to see diseases we’ve never seen before, and we’re not going to know where they came from …” (Shiawassee has one of the highest rates of birth defects in the state)

    • But Bus’ greatest legacy, in my opinion, is that he protected high school band.

    Bus was serving in the House when I was in high school. We were facing cuts to our band program, and band was a big part of my life. I LOVED BAND. Bus came to us and said “People like to cut band because they think that it doesn’t teach anything, but they are wrong. Band teaches logic and math. Marching band teaches sportsmanship and physical coordination. I will not let them cut the band program.”

    (I remember that very distinctly, because when I would practice my clarinet, the dog would howl and my dad would yell at me … “Christine do you have to play that horn!?!?” … and I would say “dad you can’t get mad because I am learning logic and math and sportsmanship …”)

    Looking back on it, Bus probably saved a lot of people by protecting our band program. Band is one of those safe places where shy and low self-confidence kids go to do something extra-curricular. Without band, alot of kids wouldn’t have had the opportunity to compete with other students, or to get leadership experience. They wouldn’t have had the chance to go to competitions and win medals as part of a team. They wouldn’t get to look forward to the start of the school year. They wouldn’t get to say “this one time at band camp …”

    Too often, it is only with the benefit of hindsight that you know how lucky you were at a particular time. But not in this case … we all knew how lucky we were … we knew our beloved band was safe as long as “Joe’s dad” looking out for us.

    So, thank you Bus Spaniola, for protecting high school band!

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