[4] One of the most memorable accomplishments of the conference was a move to develop and standardize a highly visible color for the buses and their markings to help identify them to other motorists.
[2] After high school, Cyr attended Grinnell College and then in 1923 earned his BA in Education (or Agriculture[2]) at the University of Nebraska.
[3] He became superintendent of schools in Chappell, Nebraska before continuing as a graduate student at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City), where, by 1930, he had earned his PhD.
In April 1939, Cyr organized a conference at Teachers College, funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for transportation officials from each of the then-48 states, as well as specialists from school bus manufacturing and paint companies.
[3] Together with the transportation administrators, they met for 7 days and agreed on 44 standards, including the color and some mechanical specs such as body length, ceiling height and aisle width.
In time, 35 U.S. states adopted the color with Minnesota as the last holdout, only changing in 1974 from 'Minnesota Golden Orange' to National School Bus Chrome.
[3] Cyr was also the author of The Small School in Wartime (1942) and Rural Education in the United States (1943), which was translated into both Spanish and Portuguese.
[3] As of September 1995, a television station in Stamford, New York, broadcast advanced placement classes to the rural schools of the area.