MARSEILLES, Ill. — While she was on her way to school Monday, Sept. 10, third-grader Olivia Long was telling two of her friends about a new dog she and her family were supposed to be getting that day.

"We were smiling and laughing," Olivia remembered.

Olivia, her friends Grace Satterfield and Sara Meyer, and more than 50 other kindergarten through eighth-grade students were on the bus to Milton Pope School that Monday morning, when their bus collided with a pickup truck at N. 32nd Road and E. 25th Road in rural Marseilles.