Watching the patterns of school bus traffic at the beginning and end of the school day, Cerbone observed that drivers would line up against the curb, thirty yards from the school building, and continue to idle while children were entering and leaving. Pushed by lake breezes, exhaust would permeate the first floor and the stairwells of the school as well as the busses themselves.

“I wasn’t going to tolerate that for very long,” Cerbone remembers. As a well-spoken, good-humored, two-hundred pound Italian with a salt-and-pepper-beard, he began to walk up to the school bus doors, knock politely, and say, “You know, the fumes from your engines are being driven directly into the school and that’s putting those children and teachers at risk. Would you mind shutting off your engine while you’re dropping off the children or waiting to pick them up?” Various drivers met his advances with pleasant cooperation, obvious indifference, or outright hostility, occasionally slamming the door in his face and threatening to contact the police. Mark, in turn, would offer his name and ask for theirs.

Driver names, when obtained, and bus license plate numbers were jotted down in a notebook; he then periodically faxed his growing data to the Laidlaw Bus Company. The next step in his grassroots movement was to set up a booth at the school fair. He asked people to take information only if they would pledge to call the people listed, from bus depot managers to the vice president of transportation for city schools, and make two requests: that an all-year “no idling zone” be established on both sides of the street, and that a similarly strict policy be extended to all of the public schools in Buffalo. Thirty-two people promised to make calls.

He followed up this community organizing with a presentation at the school’s parent-teacher meeting, which led to an invitation to address a crowd at a district-wide parent-teacher association meeting, broadcast on cable access.

Next he set up a meeting with the Laidlaw Director for Western New York, Jim Doherty. Cerbone was delighted to hear that the policy for school bus idling had been changed a month earlier. No busses were allowed to idle outside schools, and drivers that failed to comply would face stiff consequences. As Doherty later said, “We had a national policy but because of Mark’s involvement we made it tighter and chose to enforce it …”

Cerbone was influential because his activism was rooted in the belief that “one person can effect significant change” and the biblical injunction to “love one’s neighbor.” Indeed, his school bus activism is merely one example in an overall lifestyle of engagement with the world around him on behalf of those who “lack the education, time, or confidence to speak up for themselves.” He sees his cause as a moral stand against rampant individualism, and clings to the importance of the common good.