Bonnie Mead doesn’t feel she has a story to tell. In fact, she could write a book.
Before moving to Cold Spring in November, the 82-year-old won a demolition derby championship, worked with positive thinker Norman Vincent Peale, survived tornado alley and was shocked when, within four months, two of her neighbors in Vermont were attacked and killed — prompting her move.
Mead was born in Danbury, Connecticut, and named after “Bonnie Blue,” Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler’s daughter in Gone with the Wind. Mead’s first job was at age 13; she helped a Pawling lawyer and his wife with the office, childcare and housework.
“I got 35 cents an hour,” Mead said, which would be $4 today. “Boy, I thought I was rich!”
Tracking her jobs and hometowns over eight decades with a reporter was a challenge. She always worked two jobs. She was a bartender, veterinarian’s assistant, dispatcher, medical assistant and physician’s secretary. She lived in towns and villages from Vermont to Iowa.
Married twice, she declined to say much about her first husband, whom she divorced. “He spent quite a bit of time in jail,” she said, with a rueful smile.
In 1967, she was living in Rock Rapids, Iowa, and not working — or at least not being paid for her work, which was raising her young children while her second husband, Gary Mead, drove a long-haul truck.
It was there she experienced tornado alley; one “crossed right in front of my car while I was driving,” she said.
Beginning in 1978, she spent 12 years as a travel agent in Pawling. She was able to take some nice trips, including to Alaska, but hated flying. It was Gary, who raced stock cars, who convinced her to try the demolition derby. “I thought he was crazy but, after a couple races, I kind of liked it,” Mead recalled. She competed in derbies throughout the Northeast from 1982 to 1985, driving her “old junker” to a championship at Islip Speedway on Long Island.
She kept competing even after divorcing Gary. As it happened, “his new wife was also driving in derbies,” Mead said. “I crashed into her, and she broke her nose!” She swears it was not intentional.
Mead lost all her derby photos and trophies in a fire 30 years ago.
In the early 1980s, she was hired as a secretary for Norman Vincent Peale at his Foundation for Christian Living in Pawling. A Protestant minister, Peale wrote The Power of Positive Thinking, which has sold more than 22 million copies in 42 languages. He was also the pastor at Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan for 52 years and officiated at one of Donald Trump’s three weddings.
Asked if working for Peale gave her a more positive outlook, Mead said, “I never read his book.”
“He was all business, not overly friendly to his employees,” she recalled, adding that her job was tedious. “I learned more ZIP codes than you can ever imagine.”
It did produce one surprise: “Big 18-wheelers came up every week, just full of money,” she said. “They took big baskets of checks out of those trucks; I was amazed.”
At the same time, she also worked at the nearby YMCA Holiday Hills Conference Center, where actor James Earl Jones often performed in fundraisers. “I got to know him pretty well,” she said. “He was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.” (Jones, who lived in Pawling, died last year at age 93.)
Mead also found time to serve with the Amenia Fire Department for 12 years, from 1980 to 1992, as a volunteer firefighter and member of its rescue squad.
She said her favorite job was driving a school bus for 11 years, from 2008 to 2019. “I loved it, loved the kids, even more so the special-needs kids,” Mead said. But it wasn’t easy for someone who stands less than 5 feet tall. “They always knew it was my bus because they couldn’t see a driver.”
She’ll never forget the day she drove a school bus to Albany to take her commercial driver’s license test. On the way, the bus hit a wild turkey in flight. “There was blood and feathers all over the windshield,” Mead said. “I was hysterical.”
She was still shaky in Albany when her tester boarded the bus. “He was so unfriendly, he wouldn’t smile,” she said. As she drove through a neighborhood, three deer ran in front of the bus. She hit the brakes; the tester, who had declined to wear a seat belt, went crashing to the floor. Back in his seat, he sheepishly said that in 20 years of testing, he had never seen deer in that area.
“After that, he was sweet and talkative, and I passed my test,” Mead said.
On the drive home, she hit a turkey vulture. Her fellow drivers started calling her “Bird Killer” and “Crash.”
A year ago, while living in Enosburgh, Vermont, Mead’s life took a dark turn. A friend and neighbor, Roberta Martin, 82, went missing. Four days later, her body was found less than a mile away. She had been sexually assaulted and killed. Darren Martell, who lived in a camper near Martin’s home and had done odd jobs for her, was charged with murder. He pleaded not guilty, and his trial is pending.
“I was devastated; Roberta and I shared a backyard,” Mead said. “It was the worst week of my life.”
Things got worse. Returning from a doctor’s appointment in October, Mead encountered police and other first responders at a home down the street. A man had been beaten to death with a baseball bat and his wife critically injured. The couple’s 29-year-old son was charged with murder and aggravated assault.
“I had to get out of there,” Mead said. She had been on the waiting list for Chestnut Ridge, a senior complex in Cold Spring, for years and was able to relocate in November. She now enjoys daily visits to the Philipstown Friendship Center across the street.
Mead, who has a son, three daughters, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, responded readily when asked which of the many places she has lived felt most like home. “Probably right here in Cold Spring,” she said. “I’ve never been happier or more relaxed.”
