User:DocRushing

Howdy!

I'm a retired college professor – professor of business – one who taught mostly business law and ethics.

However, during my academic career (starting in 1977), many times I taught also business writing, English composition, and remedial English.

Further, I'm a professional writer, rewriter, ghostwriter, editor, and "book doctor" (one who "cures" manuscripts and prepares them for submission).

Since 1953 I've successfully written, edited, and advised for publication –

starting on campus yearbooks and newspapers – in junior high school, senior high school, and college –

including one year (my senior year) as the editor in chief of a university newspaper --

and continuing until the present (in a variety of roles and environments).

[During my senior year in college I also had the honor and pleasure of editing a textbook for one of my professors,

who was my faculty adviser (in the honors program) and the chairman of the Department of Physics.]

After I retired from teaching, I accepted an invitation to serve in the civilian workforce of the US Department of Defense (DoD) –

as a writer, rewriter, editor, and lead editor – taking part in the federal plain-language program –

to express government "stuff" in plain English and to translate federalese and bureaucratese into simple, readable, understandable language –

comprehensible to normal, regular, ordinary people.

First I worked on the staff of the Inspector General of the DoD, and later (with a promotion) I transferred to the staff of a three-star general.

Just before Thanksgiving 2019 I retired again (with a Commendation Medal) and returned from The Pentagon to my home, in South Bend, Indiana, where I had previously taught.

Significantly, I'm also a lifetime bus nut – largely because I grew up in a Greyhound family.

I became irretrievably hooked on buses and bus operations literally longer ago than I can remember –

that is, since I was even younger than 3.

I watched my father while he drove for Greyhound for 37 years.

He had begun in 1940 (the year in which I was born) with the Southeastern Greyhound Lines,

which in 1960 became a part of the Southern Greyhound Lines,

which about 1969 became a part of the Greyhound Lines East,

which about 1975 became a part of the undivided second Greyhound Lines, Inc., known also as the second GLI,

which The Greyhound Corporation in 1987 sold to a new, separate, independent firm unrelated to the original parent Greyhound concern.

The new owner was the highly leveraged (that is, deeply indebted) GLI Holding Company, based in Dallas, Texas.

The buyer was the property of a group of three private investors under the promotion of Fred Currey, a former executive of the Transcontinental Bus System –

which had previously used the trade name of the Continental Trailways –

and which had become renamed as the Trailways, Inc., called also TWI, also based in Dallas –

and which in 1987 the GLI bought and merged into itself.

[The Continental Trailways, later renamed as the TWI, had been by far the largest member firm in the Trailways association,

which then was known as the National Trailways Bus System (NTBS).]

Next Fred Currey completely ruined both Greyhound and Trailways (not only GLI and TWI but also the entire NTBS as well),

and then the lenders and the two other investors (of the GLI Holding Company)

ousted "Uncle Fred" Currey (as the chief executive officer) after the GLI went into bankruptcy (in 1990).

For three years – many decades ago – I followed in my father's tracks – as a Greyhound coach operator – thus fulfilling my fondest childhood fantasy.

Even now I have a serious, intense, and abiding interest in the history of both Greyhound and Trailways – mostly Greyhound, of course –

that is, the various companies which once composed Greyhound and Trailways.

In 2007 I began writing my autobiography, entitled Wheels, Water, Words, Wings, and Engines,

which contains a major chapter entitled "Growing Up at Greyhound".

While writing that chapter I included so much historical material that I found it better to move the historical matter into a separate chapter –

not an autobiographic chapter but a chapter in my autobiography nonetheless – a chapter entitled "Bluehounds and Redhounds".

[Later I gave that same name to my website.]

While writing that chapter I decided to begin to post articles online at the Wikipedia –

articles about a number of the Greyhound companies, along with a friendly and cooperative neighbor firm (the Tennessee Coach Company).

Some -- but not all -- went well after I posted those articles here at the Wikipedia.

Several well qualified fellow users of Wikipedia made some helpful contributions.

Unfortunately, however, several other users – unqualified ones and uninformed or poorly informed ones –

plus some rude, arrogant, dictatorial, and argumentative bullies – caused too much damage, conflict, and unpleasantness.

Most of those other users appeared to try to remold my articles into the shape in which those other "editors" would have expressed them –

that is, to cause my articles to look as though those "editors" had written them.

For example, one young woman struck out my words "two years younger than he" and substituted her words "two years his junior",

thereby violating the principle of the Wikipedia to “defer to the style used by the first major contributor.”

Her expression ("two years his junior") is acceptable, but I find it to be too prissy or cutesy-poo, so I had intentionally used the former words ("two years younger than he").

She also unilaterally dictated that an explanation of the pronunciation of the name Fageol is allowable only in an article about the Fageol brothers, the Fageol companies, or the Fageol Safety Coaches

(not in any other article in which the name Fageol appears).

She likewise unilaterally deleted my comment (from the article about the Dixie Greyhound Lines)

about the enormously noteworthy facts that James Frederick "Fred" Smith, the founder of the Smith Motor Coach Lines (based in Memphis), which in 1931 became the Dixie Greyhound Lines,

was the father of Frederick Wallace "Fred" Smith, who in 1971 founded Federal Express (FedEx), also based in Memphis since 1974 –

and that a part of the cash from Greyhound (in the Smith family trust fund) served as a part of the seed money for the formation, early operation, or sustenance of Federal Express.

She further declared that my note about the capitalization of The in "The Greyhound Corporation" – because "The" is an integral part of the official name of the firm –

is – in her personal opinion – an "unneeded trivial detail" – and she unilaterally deleted it too.

[By the way, the French name Fageol is properly pronounced (in an English context) as "fad-jull", rhyming with "fragile" or "satchel".]

Some of those unqualified users had trouble with passive voice, false-passive voice, subjunctive mode, parallelism, misplaced modifiers, dangling or squinting modifiers, compound modifiers,

agreement in number, topic sentences, compound and complex sentences, dependent and independent clauses, restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses and phrases, commas in general,

serial (Oxford) commas, sequence of tenses, appositives, superfluous terms, ambiguities, redundacies, capitalization (as related to common and proper nouns and common and proper adjectives),

and other niceties of grammar.

And some of their work resembled some of the work of the struggling freshmen in my courses in remedial English.

Moreover, several of those unqualified users quarreled or quibbled with me at length (as they did also with many others) –

in the supreme (but misplaced or unjustified) confidence that they, in their youthful zeal, knew more about grammar and composition than I do.

Indeed they reminded me of a few of my college students who clearly felt sure that they knew much more than I knew about my courses.

One of the boorish bullies – one who clearly did not understand the concept of topic sentences or the proper use of them in the organization of paragraphs in English composition –

at length jerked my chain in some of the rudest and most insulting behavior which I’ve ever seen anywhere –

including a gratuitous verbal personal attack on me unrelated to the subject matter or the questions under discussion.]

Alas, such behavior results in part from the dumbing down of our educational system and from the breakdown of our traditional standards for social and business behavior and etiquette.

Little people find it easy to act big, bad, and brave while hiding in the anonymity behind screen names (rather than using their real names).

For a while I tolerated the impudence, impertinence, insolence, and foolishness of the troublemakers at Wikipedia,

but finally I withdrew from that unhappy environment, founded my own website, and devoted myself to creating and developing it.

Here's a link to one section of my website, "The Reason for This Website", which describes some of my experiences at Wikipedia.

And here's a link to the homepage of my website, Bluehounds and Redhounds, which tells the history of Greyhound and (eventually) Trailways.

If you visit my website (or even just that one section), please sign my guestbook. There's one guestbook for the entire website. Thanks.

So far I've written and published (at my own website) articles about all of the Greyhound regional operating companies (and the Tennessee Coach Company) in the East –

plus one about the Northland Greyhound Lines, which describes many of the people and events involved in the early development of the larger overall Greyhound empire –

along with one entitled "Greyhound Lines after WW2", which describes the large changes (all the way to 2022) in the management, organization, and ownership of Greyhound.

Soon I'll resume writing and posting (at my website, Bluehounds and Redhounds) my articles about the remaining Greyhound regional operating companies in the West –

that is, the Overland Greyhound Lines, the Southwestern Greyhound Lines, the Pacific Greyhound Lines, the Northwest Greyhound Lines, and the Pickwick-Greyhound Lines.

If I stay alive long enough, then I'll begin to write articles about several of the Trailways member companies, starting with the Continental Trailways and its components.

If I finish that, then I'll write articles about several of the major coach builders.

Someday, if I last that long, then I'll belatedly start inserting images, especially photographs of early coaches.

Further, as several of my friends have urged me, if time allows, I'll publish a book – by using the print-on-demand (PoD) technique –

a printed compilation of all my articles from Bluehounds and Redhounds – including "Growing Up at Greyhound".

At age 82 (in 2022) I've already had several serious medical problems, so I'm on borrowed time, and I don't know how much longer I'll be able to continue that activity.

Nonetheless I'll gladly and happily continue to work on my website as long as I can.

We'll see ....

If you wish, please check my page at the Facebook.

Cheers!

Doc – Doc Rushing – Dr. D.B. "Doc" Rushing – DocRushing (talk) 23:05, 24 October 2022 (UTC)