After driving buses for nearly four years, Donald “Skip” Phipps will retire today. Driving buses wasn’t his initial career or what he started his life doing, though – Phipps enlisted in the Navy when he was 18 years old and had a career in the military for 25 years before he took on his bus-driving job.
Phipps drives Bus No. 116-D and has driven for Prosper for nearly four years, but he drove buses for eight years in other districts. He enlisted in the military right after he graduated high school. His inspiration to join the military came from his father, who had also served for 25 years.
“Well, when I first joined the Navy, it was 1967,” Phipps said. “My father was retired from the navy, so I always saw the paycheck that he got each month, and I was like, ‘you really get that?’ And, he was like, ‘yeah.’ So that kind of, you know, had me thinking about it.”
If veterans in the military serve for at least 20 years, they get a certain amount in a paycheck for retirement every month. But while Phipps had been thinking about going to the Naval Academy, he also had to think about the costs. The only thing he could confirm was becoming an electronic technician, which he first decided to try.
“Originally, I was thinking about the cost of trying to go to the academy, and, just because I had joined, you know, there was some different programs that I could have volunteered for,” Phipps said. “And so, when I was going to boot camp, I signed up for a bunch of different things, anyways, I had been guaranteed that I could become an electronic technician.”
However, Phipps decided that being an electronic technician wasn’t for him. To the dismay of one of his superiors, he decided to perform the first step of getting to the Naval Academy, which was Naval Academy Preparation School, as he called it.
“After I got out of boot camp, I came back and started going through training as an electronic technician, and, one day, my chief petty officer pulled me aside and goes, ‘Phipps,’ he says, ‘I got these orders from prep school.’ He says, ‘You don’t want to do that.’ I go, ‘Yeah, I do.'” Phipps said. “So, I had stopped going through the ET school and went through prep school.”
While he had started the first step of getting to be a naval officer, Phipps still had a long way to go. He only went to school with somewhere between 300-350 other people.
“The prep school was in preparation for the Naval Academy,” Phipps said. “Basically what it was was another year of high school, but you were in the military.”
Phipps got the appointment and made it into the Naval Academy. After going to the Naval Academy and majoring in mathematics, he went through another school to learn how to be a missile officer, which is the person in charge of the gunnery unit.
“Well, we had missiles on board, and, basically, I was in charge of the launcher and all the personnel that were assigned to that particular area,” Phipps said. “And, initially, I was a gunnery officer, but then I was reassigned as a missile officer.”
After this, Phipps got his first assignment on a ship in Hawaii with his wife. Phipps spent three years in Pearl Harbor on his first ship and went through a deployment. While this was his first one, many more would come.
“As far as tours, let’s see, I’ve been on one, two, three, four, five, six – six different tours,” Phipps said. “Then, as far as deployments, one, two, three – just three deployments.”
When Phipps got a call from his “detailer” while still in Hawaii, he was told his next assignment. Phipps got transferred to Japan.
“We were basically stationed in a ship that was homeported out of Japan,” Phipps said. “We got the chance to experience living in a foreign country for two years.”
Although Phipps was busy with his career, he said he also wanted to start a family with his wife. While they had some struggles with it, they decided to adopt a child from Korea.
“We actually went to the adoption agency in Korea, so my wife and I went ahead and went through that process, getting, I guess, you know, paperwork in, to fill out. It’s not that easy,” Phipps said. “But, anyways, we did go over to Korea and picked out a little girl.”
Phipps said his family finally began to grow, and his career was advancing.
“But, before the adoption process completed, because you go over and you choose a child, but then you have to wait until they go through another process. So, it wasn’t until December – this was in September when we adopted our daughter – and we weren’t able to go out and pick her up until December,” Phipps said. “But, during that period of time, my wife, she had become pregnant with our other daughter, so we’d basically went from zero to two in about a six-month time frame.”
After Phipps finished school, he had to go through more training before he was transferred to a different ship.
“The ship that I was assigned to over in Japan was a cruiser. I was originally on a destroyer, and the cruisers are a little bit larger,” Phipps said. “Anyways, in order to get to that ship, because they were out, doing some training, and they wanted me to join them before the training evolution was completed.”
While Phipps had about a 25-year-long career in the Navy when he retired in 1993 as a Lieutenant Commander, he wasn’t done. He became a high school math teacher in San Diego.
“Anyways, I retired in ‘93,” Phipps said. “But, prior to my retirement, I had started to go through a national university in San Diego to get my teaching credential for teaching high school math.”
San Diego was not where Phipps and his family wanted to stay, so they soon decided to move to a place just outside of Portland. That move made his teaching career change.
“Unfortunately, I had a teaching certificate from the state of California, and there was no reciprocity between California and Oregon,” Phipps said. “So, I would’ve had to go back to school again, and you know, get some further courses in order to qualify for teaching in Oregon. Teaching-wise, I could get a substitute license, and I went ahead and did that for a period of time. I couldn’t get a full license, so I got a job with a local company just south of Portland.”
Phipps and his family lived in Oregon for about 20 years. Phipps decided to move to Texas to help his now grown-up daughter watch her children.
“When we moved from Oregon to Texas, the reason why we did that also was to help our daughter out with her twins because they were only 18 months at the time,” Phipps said. “My wife and I would watch them during the day while she and her husband were at work, but, after six months of doing that, I was getting kind of burnt out.”
While Phipps said he loves his family, he needed to do something else, so when his daughter told him about a bus-driving convention in Denton, he decided to see what it was all about.
“Anyways, she came home one day and she says, ‘Dad,’ she says, ‘they’re having this job fair in Denton for school bus drivers,” Phipps said. “She says, ‘you gotta check it out.’ So, I went ahead and went to the job fair, and they wanted to hire me on the spot. But, I had to go and get my CDL license,” Phipps said. “I needed a Commercial Driver’s License, and I had to go through the training to get that. But, I drove for Denton for about five years, and then shifted over to Prosper, and then this is my third year here at Prosper.”
While Donald “Skip” Phipps is retiring, he said he’s not done. He is moving to Florida to be closer to his grandkids, but he has things he still wants to do.
“Plus, my wife works. She’s a professional counselor, and what I would do is just be sitting at home, by myself, so what I told her is, as long as you’re working, then I’m going to find something to do,” Phipps said. “And that’s what I’ll probably do when we move to Florida. I’ll probably check out and find out what district down there needs help.”
