FRESNO, calif. — Frank Edward “Ed” Ray, 91, a school-bus driver who became a hero for helping 26 California students escape after three kidnappers buried them in a storage van in 1976, died Thursday from complications of cirrhosis of the liver, said his granddaughter Robyn Gomes.
Ray was the only adult on board when his school bus, packed with summer-school kids, was hijacked near Fresno. They were later buried in the van in a quarry, where Ray led them to safety after he and two older boys dug their way out as the kidnappers slept. No one was hurt.
The dramatic incident made national headlines and was turned into a TV movie, “They’ve Taken Our Children: The Chowchilla Kidnapping.”
The driver and children all came from the small, dusty farm town of Chowchilla and the nearby community of Dairyland.
Many of the children went on to live in Chowchilla as adults and regularly visited Ray until his death. Jodi Medrano said Ray’s actions during the kidnapping gave hope to the children.
Medrano, who was 10 at the time and now runs a hair salon in Chowchilla, said she held a flashlight, helped move mattresses and never left Ray’s side while they were trapped.
“I remember him making me feel safe,” Medrano said. “I remember he actually got onto me because I swore. Ray said, ‘You knock that off.’ I thought, whenever we get home, I will be in so much trouble. That’s when I knew I was going home because he made me have that hope.”
Ray never boasted about his role in the incident, his granddaughter Gomes said.
“The community will remember him as a hero, but it’s not at all how he saw himself,” she said. “He was a remarkable man. If you met him, you loved him. He was that kind of guy.”
