standards, including the color and some mechanical specs such as body length, ceiling height and aisle width. It was at this meeting that yellow with black lettering was determined as easiest to see in the light of early morning and late afternoon. The distinctive yellow became known officially as "National School Bus Chrome." Its formula is on file with the National Bureau of Standards, now known as National Glossy School bus yellow. While most of those standards have long since changed, the yellow color stuck. In time, 35 U.S. states adopted the color with Minnesota as the last holdout, only changing in 1974 from 'Minnesota Golden Orange' to National School Bus Chrome. Following the conference, Cyr, who is recorded as having always thought the choice more orange than yellow, became widely regarded as the "Father of the Yellow School Bus." Cyr continued to be interested in school buses. In 1942, he chaired a federal conference that set school transportation policy during wartime. In April 1989, he was honored at a luncheon at Teachers College marking the 50th anniversary of the original conference. The luncheon was held in the Grace Dodge Room at the College, where the original conference had been held. At the luncheon, Cyr recalled that strips of different colors were hung from the wall and the participants in the 1939 conference talked until they narrowed the color down to three slightly different shades of yellow. The variation in shades was allowed, Cyr explained, because the color of the paint could not always be mixed exactly. Cyr also said that he and the other attendees at the conference always used safety as the first criterion for the school-bus standards. "The most often asked question was 'Will this standard improve safety?'" he recalled at the 1989 luncheon. Rural education specialist, author In 1940, Cyr served as president of the Rural Department of the National Education Association and authored A Policy for Rural Education in the United States, published that year as the Rural Department's yearbook. Cyr was also the author of The Small School in Wartime (1942) and Rural Education in the United States (1943), which was translated into both Spanish and Portuguese. He was the coauthor of The Small High School at Work (1936), An Introduction to Modern Education (1936) and Planning the Rural School Building (1949). Legacy Frank W. Cyr died at the age of 95 in Stamford,