Christmas was an almost unbearable time for Margaret Pannell. At 23, she had been married, had two children, and was widowed when her husband died by suicide just before the holidays in 1981.
Mr Pannell had worked at BHP when he broke his dominant left arm and lost the use of it. The prospect of being unable to help around the house - to work, mow the lawn, and lift his children - left him devastated.
"He thought I was looked after," Mrs Pannell said. "He was covered for life insurance, which didn't cover suicide, but he didn't know that. It was a hard time. My daughter was four years old, and I had a 22-month-old son. They keep you going, you know. But it was so close to Christmas."
In 1997, Mrs Pannell finally took up the family business and began driving a bus route, as her father and brother had done. Her mother had been a driving instructor.
By that time, she knew first-hand there were others who struggled through the holidays.
"It's not always a happy time," she said. "Driving is a strange concept like that because we have regular passengers, but because of the nature of the beast, you don't know their names. It's only when you don't see them and there's talk in the lunchroom - 'have you seen that lady who gets on at ...' - and then you realise that you haven't seen them and you don't know what happened to them."
Newcastle's first Christmas bus was a modest affair: a line of tinsel across the front of the dashboard and some festive music, a small kindness from someone who had been through the worst of it and came out the other side determined to help if she could.
Now, the Christmas Bus is a Newcastle institution. The many memories it created will be Mrs Pannell's lasting kindness to the city after her planned retirement in May.
The decorations have become more audacious over the years. It will take her and a small team of drivers who have adopted the concept about two days to decorate the bus for its final tour next month as Mrs Pannell winds down her career and looks back on her legacy.
"My mother was so excited that it's back," she said. "She was the one who wrote to That's Life when I won a Service with a Smile Award for it years ago. The family is all behind it, and the workplace - every year, they ask if they can do the bus."
While the Christmas Bus has been hers, driving duties have been shared around the local fleet since around 2010 as colleagues joined the festive tradition.
Since 2018 Mrs Pannell has been battling health complications and said that while she will miss work and her contribution to the city's culture, it will be time for her to step aside.
She has planned a European tour in May next year with her mother, who is 90 and one of her most ardent supporters, to see off a career of nearly three decades.
"There are so many memories in that bus," she said. "I've had people getting married jump on to get photos, people who have family from England and got to ride. It's just lovely that people think so much of it that they asked me to do it, and they're all standing at the bus stop with their Santa outfits on."
Asked what she hoped her legacy would be, she answered in a single line: "Be nice."
The Christmas Bus will return for the last time on December 1.
