Behind the Photo: Little Girl at Chicago Greyhound Station 9/26/2010

There a story behind every photograph. Many are mundane, some are interesting. The photo above is one of the latter; so I thought I'd write about what was going on when I took it.

My wife and I were seeing her mom off at the Chicago Greyhound station - a couple of days after I had attended the "Block by Block" Community News Summit 2010 at Loyola University.

After my mother-in-law had boarded the bus in the photo, a little girl and her mom (also in the photo) were denied entry to the bus by its driver. It turns out that Greyhound requires parents and guardians to buy tickets for kids over two years old, and the girl was a bit older than that. Her mother didn't have any money, and I actually was getting ready to offer to buy the girl a ticket when something very special happened. One of those moments of human kindness and solidarity that isn't supposed to occur in big bureaucracies like Greyhound.

Even as the girl's mom talked edgily to someone on her cell phone about what was happening - basically being stuck if she and her daughter couldn't get on the bus - the driver of the bus talked animatedly to one of the station crew guys and the two of them went over to the station office. A short while later, the men emerged gathered up the women and her daughter and put them on the bus.

The driver (of Bus 86300 bound for Indianapolis and Cincinnati at 1:30 p.m. on 9/26/2010) delayed the bus for about 15 minutes all told. Risking angering the passengers on board, and perhaps some kind of bad performance review from Greyhound. So, big ups to the driver and the station crew for doing the right thing.

And, fyi, the specific moment the photo captures is shortly after the mom first found out she and her little girl weren't going to be allowed on the bus. I shot the picture through the door to the bus gate. The girl stands confused. All excited and ready to board. But she can't. What will become of her and her mom? At that point in time, we don't know.

But I thought the backstory was worth recounting for our viewers.

And I'm sharing this tale because I kind of think that our planet could use more people like that bus driver.