LYNNFIELD — Lisa Daly remembers her father, longtime Lynnfield Public Schools bus driver Phillip Buttliglieri, through a children’s book she wrote earlier this year.
Daly said she came up with the idea to write “Papa Cannoli and His Zany Italian School Bus” shortly after her father died in October 2015.
She works as a technical writer, but said she always wanted to write a children’s book after reading them to her daughter’s Mia and Elizabeth Daly when they were growing up.
Buttliglieri was the son of two Italian immigrants who raised his three children, Phillip Buttliglieri Jr., Lisa Daly, and Gina Swansburg, in Wakefield. He worked as a truck driver for Cardinal Health in Peabody and a school bus driver for Wakefield and Lynnfield.
The book follows Papa Cannoli as he sings and teaches his bus riders about Italian culture.
“When he died, I kept thinking about him singing and I kept being reminded about him being a bus driver,” Lisa Daly said.
All of the students on Papa Cannoli’s school bus are based on her own family, including her daughters; husband, Graham Daly; and nieces and nephews, she said.
Mia Daly, a graduate of Lynnfield High School, said her grandfather drove her and her sister to school when they attended Huckleberry Hill Elementary School.
“It was almost like a celebrity to have him as a bus driver,” she said.
“It was always nice to start the day,” Mia Daly said. “He was the cool bus driver, sometimes.”
“It was super special for him to pick up the girls,” Lisa Daly said.
Mia Daly is an early education major at Salem State University and said unlike her, many of the people in her classes have relatives who are educators. But, she felt a connection to Huckleberry Hill because of her connection with her grandfather.
“Having him as a bus driver was definitely motivational. I mean, I was a celebrity at school,” she said. “Going on the bus every day with my grandfather… It made me feel just so safe.”
Lisa Daly said she read the draft of the book to her mother, Katherine Buttliglieri, before she died in March 2020. “I love my parents. They’re both gone. It just made me love my dad even more.”
The children’s book serves as part of her father’s legacy, Lisa Daly said.
She said writing the book taught her a lot about herself as a writer and helped her remember her parents.
“For me, it’s like a little piece of him that’s still out there and it makes me feel good,” Lisa Daly said.
