Most people are familiar with the big blue machine outside by the Epod courtyard, but you would never guess that it is a memorial to a mother who passed away on Christmas day in a freak ice accident. This machine may seem irrelevant to students, but it is a necessity in keeping our community safe.

Christine Lambert was driving her husband Frank and son Matt through Jim Thorpe on Christmas Day . 2005 was a white Christmas resulting in ice and snow to dress the tops of many cars and trucks. The truck in front of the Lamberts kept going straight, but the ice on top went backwards through the windshield on the driver’s side of the Lambert’s car.

Frank Lambert, now widowed, was the Head of Transportation at Neshaminy High School. He was good friends with former North Penn Head of Transportation, Mary Anne Cleary, who was here when the Lambert Machine was installed just a short few years later.

This 10 year old machine is still new in technology and is something no other school district around here has. The Lambert machine can be found behind the E pod Courtyard right by Apod. It’s purpose is to blow the snow off the top of our school buses easier and more efficiently than doing it manually. This $67,000 machine helps to ensure accidents that happened to the Lamberts do not happen to anyone else.

“We have around 120 buses so between plowing and getting the buses cleaned off when it snows or when we have a 2 hour delay, it takes a lot of work to get all the snow cleared off so it really helps us get everything cleaned off in a more efficient way rather than our workers doing it manually with a sweep and a broom, we send it through the machine and it blows off snow and it makes sure that type of accident does not happen again,” explains North Penn’s Head of Transportation Mr. Nicholas Kraynak.

The machine doesn’t demolish the time it takes to do it manually because you have to slowly drive the bus throw it, and another faculty member has to be there waiting to plow away the snow that was just blown off. The primary component of the machine is for convenience but also to take the strain off the bus drivers and other faculty helping out with the snow. Keeping our faculty safe is just as important as keeping other drivers on the road safe.

“Frank Lambert has made it his life goal to make sure that it would never happen to anyone else,” recognizes Kraynak. Lisa Boscola, a state senator, has helping the Lamberts make this goal realistic.

Christine’s Law would allow police to pull over vehicles that are dangerously caked in snow and ice and charge them with a fine. Before Bill 93 and 94 (Christine’s Law) were passed a couple years ago, the rule of the road was that you could get pulled over if snow/ice was seen coming off of the vehicle.

This $67,000 machine, in Lambert’s honor, has helped North Penn stay on top of mother nature and allows us to keep our staff, students, and community safe.