Keep on rollin'

As three women boarded an orange- and cream-colored bus on the south side of Public Square, they knew they were about to ride to the end of an era in Watertown.

The driver, Donald F. Vincent, closed the passenger door on July 14, 1967, for the 6 p.m. run, then pulled away from the curb in front of the Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. office on the south side of the Square and headed east on State Street. He and his three passengers were making Freeman Bus Corp.'s final city bus trip, concluding a city transportation tradition that for 48 years had been provided by Freeman and its predecessors.

Only about 300 people rode the buses that day.

“From the patronage of the last few years, it would be hard to argue that the role of the bus is essential in Watertown,” the Watertown Daily Times editorialized the next day. “So the obituary of bus transportation in Watertown is not sad.”

But this did not spell an end for the corporation. Indeed, the proprietor, Robert C. Freeman, had considered shutting down his company. But putting the brakes on city bus runs created a problem for some students, who had relied on those 30- to 50-passenger rigs to get to school. So with the demise of the city bus runs, Freeman soon became known for its yellow school buses, steering the company along to its 75th anniversary this year with its fourth-generation owner.

“I take a lot of pride that we have been in this position to help the community for four generations,” says Robert C. Freeman III, president and chief executive officer.

Buses — they were called autobuses at the time — began to give trolley cars a run for their money in Watertown in 1911.

Trollies, after all, could go only where their tracks took them. Operated by Black River Traction Co., they had been running their adapted streets since 1891. A proposal was made about 1910 that there should be a new route, with tracks installed on Washington Street to provide trolley transportation to the House of the Good Samaritan.

Property owners wanted nothing to do with it, protesting that the construction, the tracks and the streetcars would distract from the beauty and peace of their street.

The proposal died but was soon followed by the creation of a bus company, Watertown Transportation Co., founded by, among others, Charles E. Holbrook, a printing house owner in the city. Demand for bus service was strong in those early years when personal cars were few, but the road would be long and bumpy as bus operators tried to accommodate the public's transportation needs.

So crowded were the buses that ladies found the going difficult. The Watertown Transportation Co. took heat in August 1915 because passengers were permitted to ride on the outside platforms of buses, making it inconvenient and even hazardous for other passengers to dismount.

“This is particularly true in the case of women passengers who attempt to alight,” the Watertown Daily Times reported. “Usually the man who is riding on the platform steps aside and grasps the hand rail when a woman passenger is about to leave the bus. This makes it impossible for a woman to use the rail and she finds it necessary to turn around and alight backwards, which is extremely dangerous, or alight forward without the assistance of the rail. Some of the criticism seems especially well directed also because men who have been riding on the platforms and monopolizng the rails have been far from gentlemanly when women have requested them to step aside.”

Route structures were changed from time to time based on rider demand, with main runs geared to Franklin, Washington, Arsenal, Mill and State streets. Public Square, obviously, was the focal point.

Passenger fares had been stagnant at a nickel for several years when in 1920, Watertown Transportation Co. general manager Will L. Gould, himself an automobile dealer, complained the bus service was facing a tremendous increase in operating costs. “The fare today is the same as it was when we could employ men for $1.25 a day,” he said. The wage of the day was not reported.

The Watertown City Council, which regulated the enterprise, granted a 2-cent fare increase the following year.

By 1923, WTC had 12 buses riding the streets, and their versatility made it obvious to the management of Black River Traction Co. that the electric trolley car was approaching a dead end. Announcement was made in February 1925 that Black River Traction, headed by general manager Leon Schwerzmann, was purchasing the bus company but retaining the Watertown Transportation Co. name.

The trolley continued to roll for 12 more years, making its final stop on Aug. 17, 1937.

With the arrival of new 21-seat buses in 1927, orange and cream were adopted as the colors of city buses. The move was explained as a means of making the rigs more conspicuous to avoid accidents.

With the world still trying to dig its way out of the Great Depression, a man in Glen Park thought in 1935 that Watertown might be big enough to support two bus companies. Benjamin G. Sharp, Glen Park's mayor for several years, noticed some changes developing in the city's transportation system and readied for an opportunity.

Mr. Schwerzmann, who was president of WTC, relinquished management of the company to one of its mechanics, Guy C. Jones. One of the first acts of the Jones administration in 1935 was to abandon runs on Arsenal and Coffeen streets. Mr. Jones gave Watertown an ultimatum — either allow him to drop a low-patronage route, or watch him shut down business all together.

City Hall blinked, and in Glen Park, Mr. Sharp leaped. With no objections from Mr. Jones, Mr. Sharp was granted a franchise to operate his one bus on the two streets. He would not be in competition with WTC, or so it seemed.

In April 1937, about 15 months after he had gotten his foot in the door, Mr. Sharp applied to expand his service to Washington, Franklin and Academy streets. His move didn't get him far, but by 1940, doing business as City Bus Line, he had three buses in motion and a new route that took in Mill Street.

The two lines coexisted into 1947, but a dissatisfied public wanted changes — more-punctual service and free passenger transfers between the two companies' routes — so the return to a one-company provider, WTC, was most desired. But suddenly, Watertown Transportation Co. took an exit. On Feb. 17, 1947, the City Council consented to the sale of WTC to a couple of brothers who were experienced in the business with their work for Greyhound Bus Lines.

John P. and Edgar W. Fitzgerald, doing business as Fitzgerald Bus Lines Inc., were now about to split busing in the city with Mr. Sharp's City Bus. An agreement was formed in which City Bus would travel on the north and west sides of Watertown, with Fitzgerald covering the south and east. They consolidated transfers between bus lines, and set a goal for speeded-up service schedules.

The team effort was short-lived. During the fall of 1948, both Mr. Sharp and the brothers sold their respective interests in the city to newcomers, William H. and Minnie Pritchard, who formed Pritchard Bus Corp. with a fleet of 23 buses.

The Pritchards had previously operated a liquor store, with Minnie also working as a beautician. They found the going rough with their career change. In the new decade they were greeted with complaints about overloaded buses, a poor record in accommodating schoolchildren's schedules, discharging riders at prohibited locations and failure to abide by route schedules.

Mr. and Mrs. Pritchard retired in August 1952, selling out to somebody who was more experienced in the trade, Clarence Henry Freeman.

As he approached his 47th birthday that September, the new owner of the city's bus franchise was already in the driver's seat of a company he had named for himself.

Clarence Freeman, a native of LaFargeville, had been driving bus since 1925, when he started working for Colonial Coach Lines, a Watertown company that operated buses over 750 miles in routes extending as far south as Binghamton and northeast to Plattsburgh and Malone.

He opened his own business in 1935, when, under a lease arrangement with Greyhound, he assumed operation of a Dexter to Sackets Harbor route under the name Freeman Bus Lines. He bought his first bus for $700. Four years later he expanded by purchasing a Brownville-Glen Park line.

Freeman Bus Co. was incorporated in 1952, with Mr. Freeman as president. The following year, on June 30, a fire ripped through the bus garage at 116-118 Haley St. that he had acquired in the Pritchard sale. Two buses and equipment were lost.

Mr. Freeman subsequently expanded his company by buying out the last of the Fitzgerald brothers' operation, a Watertown-Camp Drum-Carthage route.

While the Camp Drum run was showing promise, Mr. Freeman was fighting to keep the city routes operative and make a go of a school bus service at the same time. He informed the city board of education in 1956 that he was suffering “a tremendous loss” in running school buses. Of the seven rigs he was using to shuttle students, four were 15 years old and no longer safe to use, he reported. At the end of school year “these buses will be junk,” he said. Without a subsidy from the school district, he said he might have to curtail school bus operations.

The school board, citing law, responded that it was “not in a position to subsidize the bus company.”

He forged ahead and in 1957 acquired a new location to house some of his buses, a brick garage on Beebee Island.

After suffering two heart attacks, the 53-year-old company owner died on May 31, 1959. Among his survivors were his wife of nearly 36 years, the former Alice A. Woodard, and the next two generations of the company's management, Robert C. Freeman and Robert C. Freeman Jr.

The senior Bob Freeman had graduated from Watertown High School in 1942 and served 10 months in the Pacific after enlisting in the Navy Reserves. When he returned home, he married Betty E. Macomber.

With the death of his father, Robert Freeman inherited not only the company management, but also the accompanying pressures of trying to move forward with a struggling city route service and a teetering school bus schedule. His report to the City Council in 1962 showed that street runs, now charging a 20-cent fare approved by the state public service commission, were in the red. The school bus charter service was showing a slight profit but not enough to counterbalance the losses of the city operation.

With his contract with the city set to expire on Aug. 18, he wrote to City Hall and the Board of Education that without some government assistance, “the prospect certainly looks dim” for continuation of bus service in Watertown.

He had 23 rigs on the road at the time and two new ones on the way. The company had 27 full-time employees.

The support he received was lackluster, but Freeman Bus continued to roll. As ridership continued a steady decline — from 869,878 in 1961 to 437,666 in 1965 — Mr. Freeman reduced the number of trips on city routes in 1966. His decision likely contributed to the loss of another 106,000 passengers that year.

Another move he made in 1966 was to open the door for a woman to take the wheel. In September, Ann Docteur became the first female bus driver at Freeman. Six years later, there would be 13 women driving Freeman buses.

On June 3, 1967, the State Public Service Commission granted a request by Mr. Freeman to end his city runs, as well as routes running between Watertown and Sackets Harbor, Dexter, Glen Park and Brownville. Average ridership on that trip during 1966 was six people, the commission observed.

That problem out of the way, Freeman Bus two months later landed a five-year $960,000 contract to provide transportation for students in Watertown's public and parochial schools.

Shuttling students between their schools and homes became the bulk of Freeman's business. As demand for service grew, the company's garage space became inadequate. In 1973, Freeman moved into new quarters on Marble Street, abandoning three separate locations that were off Mill Street, and on Factory and Water streets.

Bob Freeman, the guiding hand of Freeman Bus for 33 years, was about 67 when he died July 30, 1992, apparently from a severe stroke, while he was on a cruise. By that time, Robert C. Freeman Jr., who had been company treasurer, was managing the business. But his tenure lasted only another decade. The 1965 Watertown High School graduate died June 15, 2002, at age 54.

Today, the company's reins are in the hands of Robert “Robbie” C. Freeman III. At his disposal are 60 buses, including five motor coaches for Clarence Henry Coach, a charter service he founded in 2003 and named in memory of his great-grandfather.

He notes with pride that among his company's community activities is the service provided to the Watertown Red and Black semi-pro football team, of which his grandfather was a member.

The company, with 215 employees, additionally serves Jefferson County Head Start, Lewis County Head Start and the Community Action Planning Council, and operates the buses owned by the Indian River Central School District.

Family members of bus company employees are eligible for an annual $500 Robert C. Freeman Jr. scholarship.

Two of the last three passengers on the city bus run of July 15, 1967, were Joann M. Stevens, 809 Bronson St., and Rose M. Amedeo, 114 Central St.

Bus service returned to Watertown with Citibus, conducted by the city, on Dec. 8, 1975.

Robert C. Freeman III, Watertown Deputy City Clerk Elyse Frezzo, Watertown historian and City Clerk Donna M. Dutton, and Times Librarian Lisa Carr contributed research for this story.