Port Authority driver who died from covid remembered as mentor to all

A hopeless romantic who loved to burst into song, Marlon Lucas was a mentor to all he met, friends and family eulogized Friday at a funeral service in Penn Hills.

The Port Authority driver of bus 1110 died Dec. 6 after contracting covid-19. He was 57. Employees and dispatchers gave a final call over the radio system for Lucas.

“Operator Marlon Lucas is out of service,” the dispatcher said. “We thank you for your loyalty, dedication and service to this agency and the citizens of Allegheny County. You will be missed by all.”

A 1981 graduate of Peabody High School in Pittsburgh, Lucas spent two years at Community College of Allegheny County and met his wife, Dana, at a house party. They married in 1987.

“Even as a young man, he knew immediately that Dana was his soulmate,” said Pastor Khalil Stanback of You More Ministries. “They wanted to be together more than anything.”

He called Lucas a hopeless romantic who liked to remind his wife that she was the one who pursued him. A running joke between them involved their boxer, Morgan, who would wait patiently for Lucas to get home each day then run in happy circles when he did. He would joke, Stanback said, that his wife should be the one running in happy circles.

Family friends read a selection of letters the family received in the aftermath of Lucas’s death. Stanback relayed the story of a coworker who told of how Lucas approached him on his first day at the Port Authority.

“He said Marlon smiled and promised from Day 1 to always have this young man’s back,” Stanback said. “And Marlon kept his promise.”

His daughter, Tiara, spoke to her father in a letter she read during the funeral service at the House of Law.

“Dear Dad,” she said. “You always said this day would come, but I’d be lying if I said I was ready for it. I never thought that the day you went into the hospital would be the last day I would get to see you.”

She said her father would sacrifice anything necessary for his family.

“I can hear you now asking, ‘When’s your next oil change? What’s your tires look like? You got gas money? Here’s some gas money,’ ” she said.

“ ‘When are you coming home?’ ” someone added from the group of mourners.

They laughed.

“ ‘And don’t be speeding’ – I always got that one,” she said.

She said she will miss her dad’s random outbursts of song.

“Oldies, gospel, Smokey, Fred Hammond and old Michael Jackson, those were a couple of our goodies,” she said.

All of it, said her brother, Deshawn, was mentoring in disguise.

“It was all just basically mentoring,” he said. “He based his life off of mentoring.”

He said when his friends had problems and weren’t sure what to do, his own father would be a father to them as well. He said he sees that in himself, too.

“I can talk to people, get them on the right track – it’s all just a reflection of my dad,” he said. “Even now, I still see a lot of stuff he would do and stuff he would say coming out of me.”

His daughter, too, said her father will live on through her.

“Hearing all the stuff you did to help people, it’s all things I do, too,” she said. “I never really thought I got that from him, but I did.”