And on top of that, Baggett is the very first recipient of the new award, voted on by Edgewood administrators.
Asked how he was able to manage perfect attendance for nearly two decades, Baggett modestly said, “I just need to be here. I arrange my appointments where it doesn’t affect my day.”
The Hamilton native always has been mechanically inclined. He was working in a factory in Fairfield about 18 years ago when Chub Whitt, then Trenton city manager, alerted Baggett to the mechanic’s job at Edgewood schools.
Every working day since then, he gets a list of bus repairs and works on those. For the past 12 years, he also has been delivering food and paper to the various buildings in the district.
Sometimes, though, he gets to work on a bus in a different sort of way. When a driver can’t make it into work, Baggett will get the call.
“You go from a nice, quiet garage where no one talks back to you to a bus full of kids,” he said with a laugh.
Still, being a bus mechanic isn’t quite as cut and dried as it used to be. When he first started working for Edgewood, it was easier to determine what problems there were with a bus.
“It’s not just simple mechanics. Now it’s more difficult to figure out what’s wrong with them,” he said.
What goes wrong with buses most often is easy to determine, though.
“We live in the salt belt, so we fix more rust problems than anything,” he said. He and his co-workers were preparing the district’s fleet of 32 buses for state inspection last week.
Tom Foley, Baggett’s fellow mechanic, said of his colleague’s honor “He deserves it. He does everything that needs to done and is easy to get along with.”
When asked what makes Baggett good at his work, Foley said, “He likes his job.”
“I just like working for the Edgewood community and the district. Everybody’s friendly and they treat you like family. You don’t meet a stranger here,” Baggett said.
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2836 or erobinette@coxohio.com.
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