If there is truth to Allen Cox’s claim that school bus drivers number their years on the job as dog years are counted – seven go by for every one calendar year – then Cox served as a director of transportation for Bryan County Schools for 105 years.

That’s 15 people years dealing with school buses, and school bus drivers, and kids, and parents and traffic. Always more traffic.

But Cox, who retired in June, didn’t start that job until after he’d spent 13 years working as a teacher, coach, assistant principal and friend to just everyone who knows him.

One of those friends is his high school battery mate, Derrick Smith – a banker who serves on both the Bryan County Board of Education and Development Authority of Bryan County.

“Allen Cox is probably my best friend in the whole world. Actually he is best friend to a lot of people. His positive outgoing personality makes him approachable and trustworthy,” Smith said. “We were schoolmates, battery mates, college mates, and lived across the street from each other for a while as kids. If there is a person with a kinder heart and a more giving soul I haven’t met them yet.”

Richmond Hill High School boys basketball coach Jimmy Hires, who went 647-151 as a head coach and won three state Class A state titles at RHHS to punch his ticket to the Georgia Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame, worked with Cox over the years on various coaching staffs, and the two men are friends.

He put it this way. “Allen’s had a lot of hats in the system,” Hires said. “He’s done an outstanding job in everything he’s done. He coached with me, he took over the girl’s softball program and had some outstanding teams, he’s coached just about every sport there is. He’s got a great personality, he’s had a fabulous career in education and I’m proud to say I have him as a friend.”

Bryan County Schools Superintendent Dr. Paul Brooksher, who inherited Cox as transportation director when he took the job in 2012 and relied on his counsel and experience, said there aren’t too many like Cox.

“Allen Cox is a larger than life figure with the biggest of hearts and a great sense of humor,” Brooksher said. “He is the type of person who would give you the shirt off his back if needed and was always there to provide a helping hand and support, even if the matter was outside his department. The positive impact Allen has had on kids will last lifetimes and I am so thankful to have called him a teammate and more importantly a friend.”

That sort of response is why news Cox was retiring at the end of June seemed more than just a retirement.

In a way it also seemed to signal the end of another link between an older, smaller, more Mayberry- like Richmond Hill and the one getting here faster every day. Plain spoken, friendly, a bit gruff and coming across more as an old school football or baseball coach than a departmental director, Cox is a homegrown doctor of philosophy who also happens to have a doctorate. “You can call me doctor when it’s time to get in line for lunch or payday,” he once said. “Other than that you can call me Allen,” then added, “I never thought I’d go to college, and I was the first in family go to college. And I ended up with doctorate. Who would believe that?”

Albert Odom would. Cox said the former golf coach told him years ago the more degrees he has, the more money he’d make.

“I kept that in mind,” Cox said. “He was right.”

As Smith noted, Cox was a member of the 1978 graduating class, which numbered 50. They both played on Richmond Hill High School’s first varsity baseball team.

“Allen pitched and I did my best to catch what he was throwing,” Smith recalled. “We played rec league football, baseball, and then later on in life adult league softball for the Wallace Dentistry Dynasty Team Champions.”

After high school, Cox went off to South Georgia College. It didn’t take, so he came back home to drive a Pepsi truck and did so for eight years before finally going back to school to get his degree at Armstrong State, then went on to get his master’s, his specialist’s degree and a doctorate.

Over that time Cox taught and coached and got married – his wife Kristi is on the Richmond Hill city council – and started a family that includes daughters Allena, Allie and Alea – and Alivea, who was 14 when she died in 2018 from lymphoma. In her memory, Allen and Kristi started a scholarship and a café. After taking some time away Allen Cox went back to work. His job, he said, was important. So was the job his bus drivers did. So were the students.

“We’re the first people they see in the morning, the last they see when they go home,” Cox said. “And you’re needed in so many ways. You’re a counselor, you’re a nurse, you’re an educator, you’re a bus driver, you have to meet so many needs when a child steps on that bus and do that in traffic driving a 50 person bus. And then you have parents, you have safety requirements, you wear so many hats. You’ve got to be a well-rounded person to make it work. And if you don’t like it if a kid wipes a snotty nose on your sleeve, you’re probably not going to make it as a bus driver.”

Smith, a banker by trade, said it’s the way Cox cares about the people around him that “exemplifies what a good friend, dad, husband and employee should be.”

“He worked wonders, (at Bryan County Schools)” Smith said. “He cared and cares so much for the children of our community. He made sure that our kids had transportation to field trips, graduations, sporting events, and many off campus travels.”

Cox, who noted his job as an assistant principal and coach at Richmond Hill Middle School under his lifelong friend Billy McGrath was one of his favorite assignments, said his plan is to go fishing with friends and spend some quality time with his family before he decides what to do next.

“I’ve got a couple lots down on Cranston Bluff, it’s wooded, not on the water, but if you throw a rock you can hit the river,” he said. “I’m going to go down there, cut a path and build me a shed. I don’t plan on going anywhere. Besides, who can afford it? ”

He might even see a black panther while he’s there, if he’s lucky. There were reports one was around, some years ago, on property adjoining his. That would suit Cox fine, he said, since he’s never seen one as big as this one is reputed to be. It’s one more thing too look forward to, anyway.

“If God only made one Allen Cox that is OK,” Smith said. “At least He put him in the time and lives of myself and our special group of friends like Yeakle, Norris, Zeke, Craig, Dino, The Big O, Beth, Jeff and Stevie. We are all blessed to know and love him. May God continue to bless Allen Cox and his family through each chapter of life.”

Just know you might not be alone if you see Cox at the grocery store and say hello. He’s got a lot of friends in town.

“I’ll see kids I used to teach or coach or get to school all the time, in the grocery store or something, and they’ll come up to me and say ‘I still have that baseball card you gave me 20 years ago,” Cox said. “I used to give them baseball cards for good behavior. When you’re 5 years old and you get a baseball card for being quiet and sitting Indian style, your eyes light up, and it can be something as simple as that they remember. They might not remember their first grade teacher years later, but a lot of them remember who drove the bus that took them to school.”