The Pennsylvania School Bus Association announced earlier this month that the state’s student transportation industry lost a “great mentor” on March 2 when school-bus company owner Bill Roegnik, Jr., passed away after a battle with leukemia. He was 57.
Roegnik, who owned the family school-bus contractor business W.L. Roegnik Inc., served as PSBA president from 2008 through 2010, and he was a member of the Pennsylvania delegation to the 2010 National Congress on School Transportation. For his part, the Pennsylania Department of Transportation recognized Roegnik for “devoting his time and resources to be a pat of a very important process, ensuring safe transportation for this country’s children,” wrote PSBA in its April newsletter. The company operates about 2,400 school buses and serves 26 school districts in western Pennsylvania.
Roegnik went to work for the family business in 1973 upon graduating high school and assumed ownership of W.L. Roegnik Inc. when his father passed away in 1991. By the mid-1990s, the younger Roegnik was elected to the PSBA Board of Directors and was appointed to chair the PSBA Strategic Planning Committee in 1999. He was elected secretary of the PSBA board in 2002 and six years later was elected president.
PSBA said that, as president, Roegnik “made it a point to connect with all the members and held town meetings across the state to listen to members’ issues and concerns. He took this information from the members and incorporated strategies to meet their needs.”
Roegnik also wrote a monthly column in the PSBA newsletter titled “The World According to Bill.”
He is survived by wife Monica, daughter Casey L. Silverman, a granddaughter, mother Jeane Korbeck Roegnik, and 11 siblings. Donations and memorials can be made in his name to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
