Lessons in loss

By Nancy Kimball

The Daily Inter Lake

Teri Wing is diligent these days about showing her appreciation for others.

Each opportunity, the Somers-Lakeside school superintendent learned this year, could be her last.

And, in a series of lessons that some would argue are coming much too early in children's lives, the 193 students at Somers Middle School, too, are learning that they can't take another chance for granted.

"I wonder if I told Dawn enough what a wonderful teacher she is," Wing mused. "I told her, but did I do it enough? It makes me aware of how often I say positive things to other people."

The Oct. 26 traffic death of beloved Somers Middle School sixth-grade teacher Dawn Bowker was arguably the toughest blow in a year that had more than its fair share of tragedy for students, parents, teachers, administrators and officials of School District 29.

In March a sixth-grade boy on a school outing to Blacktail Mountain ski area crashed into a tree on a downhill run, leaving him with severe brain trauma and every bone in his face broken. Today, with 20 percent hearing in only one ear, he attends school for a couple hours a day while his twin sister does her best to carry on with a normal life.

A number of parents of the district's school board members and faculty died.

A Lakeside elementary teacher took a month's leave of absence when her husband became critically ill; he gradually is pulling out of it now.

A sixth-grade student's mother is in the midst of cancer treatments.

Another sixth-grade boy spent much of this fall in the hospital after breaking his arm for the second time - from doing nothing more strenuous than tossing a ball. Doctors continue their research and treatment.

"The morning of Oct. 26 I was in Lori's office, saying to her we've had enough sadness and loss to last a lifetime," Wing said of her talk with Lori Schieffer, Somers Middle School principal.

"Within an hour we got the news of Dawn's accident."

It was early that Thursday morning on the Somers cut-across road, Montana 82, when Bowker was on her way from her Bigfork home to teach at the Somers school.

An eastbound pickup truck drifted into her lane and crashed into her Subaru head-on. She died at the scene. The driver of the truck has pleaded not guilty to negligent homicide.

Bowker was just 27, in her second year of teaching math at Somers. This year she had taken on a health and P.E. class, too.

She has been described as energetic, an outdoorswoman, awesome, positive and as having a zest-for-life.

But one characteristic repeatedly surfaces - kindness.

"She was always really kind and nice and caring to everyone around her," Rachel Stevens said. The 12-year-old has attended Lakeside and Somers schools since kindergarten. This year, Bowker was her teacher.

"One of the first things you noticed was she was very kind to everyone," classmate Morgan Caldbeck agreed.

"She was very gentle," Amy Holtz added quietly.

Holtz and Bowker had started their first year of teaching at Somers together last year. Although 20 years Bowker's senior, Holtz finished college the same year as Bowker. They hired on at Somers and team-taught sixth-graders with veteran teacher Cheryl Hammond. Through daily shared planning time and their shared Christian faith, the three grew extraordinarily close.

"We would balance each other," Holtz said. "If one was having a bad day, the other two could bring her up. We can't do that now."

"Last spring, Dawn came to my room every day," Hammond said. She would plop down on the ancient couch in Hammond's room and pour out her heart. Sometimes it was about her personal life. Sometimes it was what she did or failed to do in class that day.

"For all of Dawn's wonderful ways, she lacked a lot of confidence in herself," Hammond said. "But when I got to know her, she and Amy both seemed like they had five or 10 years' experience, a lot of common sense."

Bowker gave as well as sought support. When Hammond's 23-year-old daughter was sowing some wild oats, "Dawn was a solid rock," Hammond said. "She said, 'She'll do just fine, all you can do is just pray for her - that's what my mom did.'"

Bowker showed "godly wisdom," Hammond said. She didn't spout Bible verses. She simply walked out her beliefs.

"Knowing that math was always my least favorite subject, she made it a whole lot more fun than I ever thought it was," Skylar Wallen said.

The sixth-grade girl's experience was not unique. Bowker cared whether students learned math. But she cared more what was going on inside each student's heart - and their muscles.

"Once or twice a month we had to run a mile," Brianna Neater said of P.E. class, "and she would run with us."

"She would encourage us," Stevens said.

"She'd let us stop if we had a stomach ache," Caldbeck added.

That attitude played in every aspect of Bowker's life.

She loved to bake apple pies with her students, teaching how to cut the apples, how to roll out the pie dough, how to spice and fill and bake them.

In fact, it was the last thing she did with her students - on Wednesday Discovery Day, the day before she died. Her mother, Irene, returned to the school this past Wednesday to lead that lesson with Dawn's students one more time.

"She loved to hear about all the experiences you had," Caldbeck said. "If there was more than one person at her desk, she wouldn't cut you out. She would listen, then make sure she had time for the lesson."

Tragedy tore that from them all too soon.

"That was the worst day I've ever had," Caldbeck said. The entire circle of sixth-graders gathered around a table with him agreed.

A stunned administrative team called in the Flathead Valley Quick Response Team, counselors who led them through the early hours.

First, Schieffer and Wing told Holtz; Hammond was home for the day and eventually got a knock on her door, too. At lunch, they gathered the rest of the teachers. Phone calls went home to parents, asking them to break the news to their own children that night. The next morning at school, teachers talked with the students. Clergy were called as students wished.

"A friend on the bus told me. I couldn't believe it at first," Ciara Farrier said. The sixth-grader pondered the alternatives. "I don't know how it would have been if I had heard it at home."

"We made posters, and wrote cards and letters and put them on the white board," Kyle Kosinski said, recalling the shared grieving among his fellow sixth-graders. "All day Friday we just walked outside, talked with our friends, wrote cards."

Today, just about every kid in Somers Middle School either wears or carries a purple dog tag on a neck chain.

Each reads: "Remember Miss Bowker through Acts of Kindness, 2006."

It ties in with the school's plan this year to "catch them doing good," and award students with dog tags for displaying the character trait of the month.

They established a Dawn Bowker Memorial Award, given each quarter to one student who exemplifies love for life, kindness, unconditional love, consideration and respect for others - the qualities Bowker showed on a daily basis. Brianna Neater was the first-ever winner of the award.

Sixth-graders planted tulip bulbs outside Bowker's classroom window.

And they are making plans for an orchard there. Her students started the idea by collecting money for an apple tree in her honor. Then another community group got involved, then the Chamber of Commerce, and now a Healthy Kids program grant may pay for seven trees to provide home-grown fruit for the school's food service.

Life is not the same at Somers Middle School without Dawn Bowker, but it is moving forward.

Nate Dorcheus, a compassionate, well-qualified young teacher, was brought in from Lakeside Elementary to take over Bowker's math class. He is letting students call the shots on changing even the smallest details in the classroom, giving them the space to grieve and heal at their own pace.

"That helped with the kids," Hammond said. "Life does go on. That is an important lesson for kids to learn - we don't wallow in depression. That's what Dawn would have done, too."

The family gave permission to make copies of a CD of Christian worship songs that Bower wrote and recorded, and the school has permission to play it there. Rapt silence fell on the classroom the first time her students heard it.

"I think Miss Bowker was kind of like a second mother to a lot of us kids," Stevens said.

"And she was humble enough to not even know the impact," Schieffer added.

Hammond and Holtz talked at length of their friendship with Bowker, of her love for God, of how they lean even more heavily on each other now. They admit their moments of tears in the classroom, of how they tell students that grieving is perfectly OK but that moving forward is healthy.

They watch for the tough times with the kids, and do their best to comfort, to listen, to cheer them up. As they said, it's what Dawn would have done.

Holtz summed up Bowker's philosophy to act on her faith in all arenas, not just talk about it:

"She was a living letter."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com