Local teacher leaves impact

ST. IGNATIUS - Joyce Easter didn't leave her job at the door at the end of the day. Long after the last school bus left, her friends, students and colleagues say the 69-year-old St. Ignatius teacher of 17 years, who died March 26, dedicated herself to her work in ways far surpassing her job description.

"She kind of broke a lot of rules in that there really wasn't a limit in how far she would go for a kid," said Carrie Stefanatz, a counselor at the middle school and high school. "It's pretty much against things we're told that we should do in taking care of ourselves as professionals, but she would take [students] home, feed them, nurture them, whatever it may be. She really saw it as her spiritual vocation that she would do whatever was asked of her to help a kid achieve their goals, their potential."

One such student, Kyla Mitchell, now a junior at Mission High School, practically grew up in Easter's classroom. Mitchell's parents were custodians at the school and often brought the infant Mitchell with them to work.

"Once I got into middle school, she started helping me with my schoolwork. And then my freshman, sophomore and junior year, I've been in all of her classes," said Mitchell, who took two study hall classes under Easter just this year and remembers Easter pouring her own money into school supplies and food for her students.

"She'd always get everything for her kids. That's what she called us: her kids."

Mitchell said Easter helped students with a number of courses, but especially with math. Mitchell said many of her struggling peers were able to pass high school with Easter's encouragement

"She had this attitude that it's okay to make mistakes, just make a better mistake each time. So as you climb the ladder of mistakes, you're getting better. And that's not failure, that's trying," said Susan Batiuchok, a Mission Elementary School teacher.

Batiuchok said that when Easter was in the hospital for heart problems two years ago, she helped a student over the phone from her hospital bed.

"She was a lifeboat. If kids felt like they were on a sinking ship, there she was for them," Batiuchok said.

Easter, who died at St. Luke's Hospital in Ronan, was born August 17, 1940 in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was the only recipient of the William Woodward Scholarship, which granted her full tuition at the University of Cincinnati, where she majored in math and English with a minor in German.

Stefanatz said she thinks the scholarship imbued Easter with a desire to give back and serve her community. Easter would often tutor children into the summer, Carrie said, yet refuse extra compensation.

"There was never a student where she was like, ‘I'm not going to be able to help this child.' It was sort of her moral ethic that she was called to do this work," Stefanatz said.

After marrying Neil Easter in Cincinnati, Easter spent 10 years at home with their two sons, Kirk and Erick, before teaching at high schools in Washington Courthouse, Ohio; Middletown, Ohio; and Mariemont, Ohio. The Easters camped in Yellowstone National Park every summer and fell in love with Montana, moving here in 1983, said Ben Corral, a long-time friend and a custodian at the high school.

Although Easter had a heart condition and diabetes and underwent a few health crises over the years, Batiuchok said "everyone just trusted in medicine and God that she would get through it. It was a serious shock that she didn't. She was such a fighter, and also had miles to go before she slept."

"I thought she'd be here forever, to tell you the truth," Mitchell added.

"She wanted to be," Batiuchok said. "She really did. She really cherished life, and her job was a major part of her life. I don't even think the word job fits."

"I don't think that she thought of it as a job," Mitchell cut in. "She loved everybody."

"It was her passion," Batiuchok agreed. "It really was her passion, helping others and not allowing failure."

"She was a shepherd among shepherds, we'd tell her, among kids," Corral said. "Some of them thought of her like a mom, a grandma, an auntie, a friend."

Because of Easter's dedication to her students, kids flocked to her classes, sometimes stretched beyond capacity. Mitchell said her seventh period class this year with Mrs. Easter began as a small class, but more and more students switched into her class until there were so many students that there wasn't room to sit.

Tim Krantz, one of Easter's former high school students, who is now a fourth-grade teacher at Mission, said Easter is an inspiration to him as a teacher: "She definitely held us to her expectations and you could do a lot and I don't think she'd still ever break that expectation of what she knew we could do as students. Coming in as a colleague, as a teacher, I felt very proud to work with her."

Bernadette Alexander, the mother of twin boys who both excelled under Easter's tutelage, said Easter went out of her way to set up meetings before school to help one of her boys earlier this year.

"In the short amount of time she was able to spend with him, he did a complete turnaround," Alexander said. "She was a very loving woman where the kids were not apprehensive about going to her and saying ‘I need your help.' She just knew and she'd step right in there and wouldn't take no for an answer and put on the kid gloves. My boys, I know, really, really loved Miss Easter."

Easter's colleagues and friends remember the love and commitment between Easter and her husband, Neil.

"They were people of routine. They do the same thing every day like clockwork," Stefanatz said. "That man carried her books every day to the classroom. Every day, he'd walk her in and open the door for her. At the end of the day he would come like clockwork to pick her up and do whatever she said. Never once did you ever see that man complain about loving his wife and doing all the things he would do for her, which were so many."

A couple of weeks before she died, Easter and Stefanatz comforted a student whose girlfriend had broken up with him, and he thought he'd lost the love of his life. Easter told the boy about her own love story - meeting Neil and how much fun they had and how she knew right away she wanted to marry him - and reassured the boy that one day he would meet such a person.

"It's the best love story I've ever heard in my life," Stefanatz said.

Despite her failing health, Easter was not interested in retirement, Stefanatz said. After having stints put into her heart two years ago, Easter ignored doctor's concerns that she would likely not be able to return to teaching full time.

"Of course, the doctors didn't realize there was not ever a question in her mind of whether she was going to come back full time. She literally couldn't sit. The saddest day in her life in a school year was the last day of school."

"There was no idea in her that she wouldn't work. She was never going to retire; she would never be forced to medically retire. That's why she worked until a week before she died," Stefanatz said. "The idea that she died as she did - it's exactly how she wanted it to be, because she was able to teach up until the very last moment that she possibly could."