PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY — GMG Elementary Principal Stacey Busch, bus driver Mike Bowers and elementary librarian Peggy Stonewall pose for a photo on Monday morning as Busch, left, and Stonewall, right, sit in the chairs Bowers, center, recently donated to the elementary library in Green Mountain.

GREEN MOUNTAIN — Mike Bowers isn’t the type of person to seek out attention or recognition, but GMG Elementary Principal Stacey Busch had to give him a shoutout for a few of his recent contributions to the district that has educated his kids.

Bowers, who runs 3rd Generation Upholstery in Marshalltown along with his wife Stephanie, recently donated four chairs to the GMG Elementary library, and he also went through the trouble of obtaining his Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) so that he could pick up a morning and afternoon bus route transporting students to and from school. He also plans to drive for some sporting events and extracurricular activities, including a boys basketball game later this week.

As he explained, he made the decision after noticing how the struggle to find bus drivers was affecting his own family.

“It took our kids about an hour to get to the bus stop with the shortage of drivers, so I’d been contemplating it and just went ahead and rolled with it,” he said. “It took a while, little bumps in the road, and there’s a few more hoops to jump through than I thought. I figured I can be at my shop by 9 in the morning and leave a couple hours early in the afternoon.”

Elementary Librarian Peggy Stonewall said she walked into the store on Main Street a while back to see if Bowers would be interested in making some sort of a donation, and he was more than happy to oblige her request.

“Thank you so much. I know how expensive those chairs can be to reupholster,” Stonewall said.

Bowers and his daughter Phoebe, a student at GMG, worked on the chairs over a weekend, and he let her pick out the materials. He had originally considered giving them a different set of chairs but felt the ones he settled on were a better fit for the library.

He admitted that he’s always a bit skeptical when people come into the shop asking for money or donations, but when he realized that it would be benefiting the school district, he changed his tune.

“Our kids have gone here. Our oldest is 20, and it’s always been a good school. We’ve never had any issues, and everybody’s always treated me nice,” Bowers said. “And I always like to treat them nice back.”

And for Busch, contributions like these simply point to the quality of the families who send their kids to GMG.

“We have amazing families that attend GMG, and we appreciate the collaboration and the support that we receive from them,” she said. “And once again, (Mike made) a very delightful donation, which is giving back to our kids and providing additional seating. They take pride in it as well, and so it’s just great to have that collaborative effort. That’s been one of the big goals of our district this year is to connect with families, get them back into the buildings and really complement one another.”