Elizabeth Buie, a pioneering African-American cab driver and taxi owner, died of heart disease Saturday at the Alice Manor Nursing Home. The East Baltimore resident was 89.
Born Elizabeth Webb on a Sanford, N.C., farm, she completed the seventh grade and did agricultural work in neighboring Broadway.
When she heard there was work available here, she moved to Baltimore in the 1940s and took a job packing hand grenades at the Edgewood Arsenal. She rode a bus from her Gay Street home to Harford County. In a 2006 oral history interview, she recalled how one of her co-workers was killed when an explosive blew up.
"You were working so fast you didn't get bored," she said in the interview.
After World War II ended, she was laid off from the Edgewood job and found work at the old Continental Can Co., where she put lids on canisters until a machine put her out of a job.
One day in 1956, when she was 39 and looking for work once again, she was standing at Fayette and St. Paul streets in downtown Baltimore.
"I will never forget that day," she said in the oral history. "Cab 482 came down St. Paul and it was a white lady driving. When I got home I called Yellow [Cab Co.] and I asked were they hiring lady cab drivers, and the lady told me yes.
"So I went over the next day and I'm still here," she said last year, recalling that on her first day on the job, she "had 50 cents to my name."
After driving a Yellow Cab for 25 years, she saved enough money to buy her own cab. She recalled the permit cost $5,000 and the car was $2,900, plus a radio, meter and insurance. She worked seven days a week to make the initial payment.
"She was a pioneer, a black woman driving for Yellow Cab," said Paul Kilduff, a co-worker at Yellow Transportation, now known as Veolia.
Mrs. Buie also recalled being robbed: "It really didn't scare me. It was one Sunday morning about 7:30 and I picked a man up around Fayette Street and he wanted to go to the 2200 block of Barclay. ... He had the gun pointed across me. I gave him the money bag and my wedding ring. That's what hurt me."
In her many years behind the wheel, Mrs. Buie recalled shuttling Orioles players from the Cross Keys Inn to the old Memorial Stadium. She also carried entertainer Lena Horne and Block strippers.
"Everybody would break their neck to get down to Baltimore Street," she said. "They would tip well, and treat you nice. Throw you a 10 or a 20."
She drove her cab until she was 75, when she sold it and retired -- but only briefly. "I missed my money and I missed getting up and going to work," she said.
She joined the Yellow Transportation Co. as a school bus attendant who monitored disabled children.
"She ruled that bus with an iron fist," said Mr. Kilduff, her co-worker. "You knew who was in charge."
Mrs. Buie worked for Yellow for 50 years until last year, when she stopped because of her age.
"For someone who was only able to get a little formal schooling, she was knowledgeable," said her grandson, William D. Buie. "She was feisty, smart and well-liked."
No services are planned.
Survivors include a son, William S. Buie of Baltimore; a sister, Christine Webb of Florida; and three additional grandchildren. Her husband, Benjamin Buie, died in 1967.
jacques.kelly@baltsun.com