There Are No Girls on the Internet - Revisiting Miss Estella's Brilliant Bus

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

One of our favorite TANGOTI guests of all time, Miss Estella Pyfrom of Estella's Brilliant Bus, a mobile learning and technology center, passed away at the age of 85. Her family says they'll keep the bus going in her legacy.DONATE TO ESTELLA’S BRILLIANT BUS: TANGOTI.COM/BUS(If you’re moved by Estella’s story but can’t donate at this time, we’d love to donate in your honor! Hit us up at [e-mail] )Read about Miss Estella's life: https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/2022/01/01/estella-pyfrom-computer-center-brilliant-bus-dies-85/9067371002/Learn more about Estella’s Brilliant Bus: http://estellasbrilliantbus.org/Estella’s 2015 Super Bowl ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVNodM0F5gU Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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There are no girls on the internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. I am so sad to report that one of my all-time favorite guests of all time on this podcast, Ms. Estella Pfehram passed away from leukemia at the age of 85. Ms. Estella's story is incredible. She was born in the 30s, grew up during the Dust Bowl, became a teacher, and in her 70s spent her entire retirement to build a mobile learning lab equipped with computers, so kids and adults in her community who didn't already have access to computers,

could get online. And she was still driving that bus when we talked last year as part of my birthday fundraiser for Estella's brilliant bus. Now, I first heard her story when she was featured in a Super Bowl ad during the 2015 Super Bowl. She quickly became one of my heroes. And as our producer Mike can tell you, I have probably never been more nervous to speak to a guest. Bridget, I have seen you prepare to interview some badass women who are like not to be fooled with. And, And I've also seen you prepare to go on talk radio programs with, like, conservative assholes who are, like, hostile to your point of view. And I have never seen you be more nervous than when you interviewed Miss Estella. Oh, I mean, the woman is an icon.

She's a legend. And first of all, I mean, just being a black woman who grew up in the South, when you're talking to you. to a black elder, there is a whole different level of respect and scrutiny that you need to show. Notice how I only refer to Ms. Estella as Miss Estella. And so that was one reason why it was just right off the bat, very nervous. You know, this is an elder in our community. And so you really have to show a certain level of deference and respect. And, you know, if I was interviewing somebody like, I'm Mark Zuckerberg. I could do that in my sleep. Interviewing Miss Estella was a completely different story. And also just the fact that I get very nervous when I'm interviewing

somebody that I deeply respect and I so deeply, deeply respect Ms. Estella and her work and her legacy and just the incredible life that she lived. And I felt such a deep responsibility to do her story justice because her story is incredible. You know, this is somebody who really lived an important life. So yeah, I was pretty nervous. What is it about her story that you respect so much that inspires so much in you. What a good question. I think one of the things that struck me is reading her obituary,

how her family talked about how a lot of people thought that her making the brilliant bus was her second act, but it was really more like her third or fourth act. And so I just really respect that she was someone

who never felt like she was too old to start something that she wanted to do, never felt like she was too old to impact her community, never felt like she was too old to really live her legacy. And so I just respect her story so much. Yeah, you got to respect and love that third act.

Mrs. Stella's family says they're going to try to keep her brilliant bus alive to continue connecting residents of all ages to vital technology. And you can go to tangoity.com slash bus to donate. Mrs. Stella leaves behind four children, three of whom are educators like their mama, 13 grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and countless others that she touched, myself very much included. Mrs. Stella, you are an icon. Let's listen to her story.

So in true nerd fashion, I have a birthday on Pi Day this weekend on March 14th. And to celebrate, I wanted to honor one of my heroes, Estella PiFrome. You might have seen her story in a Super Bowl commercial in 2015. Mrs. Stella spent 50 years in public education, serving low-income kids in a Title I school. Now, while teaching, she saw that many of her kids couldn't always do their assignments because they didn't have access to a computer or reliable Internet at home. So she created Estella's Brilliant Bus to bring the computers to them. My name is Estella.

I'm the owner, the creator, and founder of Estella's Brilliant Bus. Estella's Brilliant Bus is a mobile learning center where we provide education and technology for underserved communities, to children in underserved communities. And that's what we've been doing since. we started, but realizing that the children have other siblings and other relatives that need our service. We have expanded our service to include not just children, but adults in underserved communities.

That's what the brilliant bus is all about. It's not just a tech center. It's a learning center when we use the bus to provide the technology to accomplish the mission that we set out to do in the communities. After retiring in her 70s, Mrs. Stella spent her life savings on a bus that she turned into a mobile learning center to help bridge the digital divide

and help bring technology to the communities who need it most. Knowing that I was getting older and I was pretty much, I would say, well over 7 through 1, I knew that if I was going to do anything other than work at the school, I needed to look at what that option might be. And when the hurricane devastated other people in New Orleans and other places, it sharpened my idea about going out in the communities and doing something that I thought would

be worthwhile. I had the idea of creating something to take out in the community, but put it on hold because I wasn't really sure what I was going to do. But after that hurricane, I thought about this is it. According to Pew, a quarter of lower-income teens don't have access to a home computer. And one quarter of black youth said they often or sometimes can't do their homework assignments because they don't have a reliable internet access or a computer. Compare that to just 13% of white youth. This is sometimes called the digital divide,

and it presents a big barrier to kids in all communities being able to, succeed? I figured if I could create a project that I could take out in the community, because we knew that this was age of technology, and I knew from working with Title I schools, and there was that digital divide. So I wanted to keep that going, because I know as far as our communities is a concern that we served. The children that attended the Title I school was missing at home the technology. Mrs. Stella was relentless, and she also dreamed big.

Her first thought was to use her old minivan, and she even toyed with the idea of trying to get her hands on a semi-truck to turn that into a mobile computer lab. So in putting my ideas together, The first thing I asked myself, how can I provide technology to these underserved communities? And I've been thinking about it a while. I knew that the band that I had would not be enough because it was just not big enough to serve more than four or five children at one time, if that many.

So I decided after thinking about it, what is it that I would be comfortable with knowing that I didn't have a lot of money. But how can I make it work? Because I was of the failure that's not an option mindset. So I knew what I was going to do had to be successful because failure was not an option. So I thought about the man and I ruled that out. I thought about a semi-truck and I said I can't drive that. I'm only back to one out during my lifetime. But then the bus came up.

I said that I used a bus. I have a lot more space. And of course I can drive a bus because I learned to drive a bus during my childhood because my daddy had no boys. had six girls, and I was the only girl that was brave enough to learn how to drive the truck and the bus. So I figured I could save some money if I used a bus, because that was something that I could drive when I needed. So I grabbed some paper and a pencil, sketched out of drawing, figured out what I wanted to do. and started working on it.

And it was an idea that I put together on paper, and then I was successful in lifting that idea of the paper and put it into reality. I didn't know that you actually drive the bus yourself. My goodness. Yes, I'm going to drive the bus. And when we first got started, I drove the bus. And most of those videos that's on the bus,

the website or on YouTube, they didn't believe I could drive the bus either. Okay. They all made me drive the bus. You see me driving. I'm driving the bus. But I have someone to help me drive the bus. The producers didn't want that. They wanted me to drive the bus.

I guess to prove that my age that I could drive that bus. Do you mind me asking how old you are? You don't have to say if you don't want to. No, I'm 84. It was Mrs. Stella's father who instilled in her the importance of helping others and sharing with your community, even if you didn't have a lot. My father was a migrant contractor, and we traveled from Florida to New York for 19 years to harvest produce, chicken beans, corn, potatoes, and things of that sort. And my dad was a very kind-hearted man who really enjoyed giving and helping people, even though he was a poor man.

And we would travel up north, leaving Florida during the month of May, mid-May, and sometime come, we would come back in October. because if you don't have any skills, then you have to do unskilled laboring jobs. And that was what was going on with my parents. Neither one of them ever finished elementary schools. So they didn't have skills, but they were very smart and hardworking people. Growing up poor in a government housing project,

Miss Estella knew that not much was expected of her, but the power of community helped her subvert those low expectations. We lived in a government project. And if you have seen the documentary harvest of shame

by Edward Palomoros, when they predicted that we probably wouldn't ever get out of that project. We would just stuck there for life. And that less than 30% of us would ever get out of there.

And a smaller percentage of us would probably not make it to college because we will be stuck in that rut and that government project. But I'm proud to say that many of us who went to school out there, graduated from high school, went to college, and obtained advanced degrees. Now, in the project where I lived, it was the ideal of to take the village to raise a child. And all of us were poor, most of our parents were working far away in the fields. But there was always someone home in that project during that day.

and they would look out for each other. If we got hungry during the day, we could go to that neighbor's house and they'll give us some bread and cheese or bread and mayonnaise or bread and peanut butter. So it's one of those things where the village actually helped raise a child and we learned to share whatever we had,

whatever resources that we had. So we just grew up with that mentality. Do you feel that that's what? why you're inspired to give back to the kids in your community with the bus to make sure that they have the same kind of village that helped raise you and your sisters? I'm sure it has something to do with that. And that experience is, I think, what transformed me into the person who I am today, giving and sharing with other people who need us the most. Now, summers can worsen the divide between low-income kids and kids whose families can afford things like summer camp.

The learning loss that students sometimes experience when they're out for summer break is sometimes called the Summer Slide, and a John Hopkins study found that by ninth grade, the summer slide makes up for two-thirds of the reading achievement gap between low-income kids and middle-income kids. To combat this, Ms. Estella spent her summers taking kids on educational trips in her bus. She self-financed them, looking for deals on hotels and meals, so the trips wouldn't cost the families a dime. But then, COVID hit. And now her bus is in park. We would go take the bus and go into communities. We had worked with churches, community centers, schools, and county organizations.

And we would just schedule our activities. and we would go out in the community and make things happen. There was no problem. When COVID came along, everybody was afraid of everybody. So business was shutting down. People were afraid of their children

and other family members. And, of course, you know, they were dying. So we adhered to what the community was doing. When they shut down businesses, we parked the bus. And now, I have two buses now, and we would take these kids across the country to travel the freedom trail and also get more exposure to technology, education and technology. And we would get on the road for 10 or 12 days with 100 teenagers going across country to get more exposure. because many of the kids who live in those little communities, they don't get to go to town, so they speak,

because sometimes their parents can't afford to take them. Many of them are working, or they just can't afford the other expense that go along with it. So three years in a row, I was very successful in taking the kids across the country for 10 or 12 days, giving them the exposure and not having to charge them one cent. And then we were able to expose them through technology and address the summer slide.

But this past few lines, we did not, because we were right of going into or involved with COVID. So again, we didn't want to be responsible for exposing kids to, COVID because they're just learning a little bit more about it. But they didn't know anything about it. They didn't know very much, I would say, about it. So we just decided we'll just stay in, close up like the other businesses until they find out more how to keep people. And I'm talking about adults and their children safe from the coronavirus.

COVID has only shown how important it is for all kids to have access to technology. If low-income kids didn't have computers or reliable internet at home before, how are they supposed to keep up with remote learning during COVID? Pew actually found that one in five parents with kids at home because of COVID say it is very or somewhat likely that their kids won't be able to complete schoolwork because they don't have access to a computer or internet. It's so important to support community leaders like Miss Estella, who won't let a generation of kids get,

left behind because of their economic circumstances. In Miss Estella's community, they looked after little ones like a village, sharing what little they had with one another. She's a living legend, and her work and legacy is a testament to the fact that anyone can make a lasting difference. Miss Estella, what a life you have lived, what an inspiration? What do you want to say if somebody is out there and they think, gosh, I want to make a difference, but I don't know what I can do?

What's your message to them? because you've made, you're one woman and you've made such a big difference on your community. What is your message to other people who might be listening who want to do what you're doing and make a difference in their communities? No, that age is one thing. And the other thing is, if you can believe it

and willing to work, you can achieve it. I so appreciate it. I appreciate you. I appreciate all that you do. Miss Estella, you are an icon, friend of Oprah Winfrey. Yes, and she wrote to fall forward in my book. Oh, my goodness. I have a book out there that's called The Legacy of a Humble Black Woman,

from fear to factory to Estella's brilliant bus. It's on the website, too. For my birthday, I hope you'll consider supporting Miss Estella's vision for the future by making a donation to Estella's Brilliant Bus if you're able. Go to tangoity.com slash bus to donate. That's Tangotie. A-N-G-O-T-I-com slash bus. If you're moved by Miss Asella's story and want to donate but aren't in a position to do so right now,

hit me up at hello at tangoity.com and we'll donate in your honor. We keep us safe and we keep us strong. So let's all keep striving to be the change we want for our communities, just like Miss Estella. You are a living legend, such an inspiration to me personally. When I saw your Super Bowl ad, I cried before we spoke today. I watched it again, and I had the same feeling. There's just something so beautiful about what you've done for your community, so I'm so very grateful for you.

And at 84, I'm still doing everything that I could do to make a difference during the time that I'm here. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangooty.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangooty.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Richard Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed. creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Dodd. If you want to help us grow,

rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odin Kirk to David Letterman helped make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why are we all so obsessed with romance? On the Radio 831 podcast, join us, Sanjana Basker, and Tyler McCall, as we unpack all the trending tropes, fuzzy adaptations, book talk drama, and celebrity love stories with hot takes and sharp guests.

Each episode digs into what these stories reveal about desire, fantasy, identity, and how we love now. Listen to the Radio 831 podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. American soccer is about to explode. The World Cup is coming. Raymore sending on to Ernie Stewart. The Chip. I'm Tab Ramos. I'm Tom Boeke.

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