"No flowers but backpacks full of school supplies for those who need them": a wish granted at a teacher's funeral
There are teachers with a small t and teachers with a capital T. We all have indelible memories and recollections of teachers, professors who have diligently taught us their subject with a hostile, severe attitude who are etched indelibley on our memory; maybe if we had teachers like that who made us hate their subject, they weren't cut out to work among students at school. On the other hand, there are teachers, of school and life, who we will never forget for quite the opposite reasons ...
This is the emotional story of Tammy Waddell, a school teacher from Georgia, USA, who passed away in 2018 due to bowel cancer; a terrible loss for all the school staff where she worked and for all that generation of pupils and students who had been lucky enough to have learned with her in a classroom. In fact, Tammy was a fantastic teacher, she was not only good at transmitting her knowledge to her students, but she always put humanity and empathy first and she always lent a hand to those who had were in need. For this reason her obituary, as well as her last wishes before passing away, had been clear:
"Tammy had a passion for literacy and believed that every child deserved an opportunity to learn. Although her achievements and accolades are numerous, none of them have been greater than the many lives she has changed over the course of her three decades. Instead of flowers, bring backpacks full of school supplies to honor Tammy's passion for children in need or make a donation in memory of Tammy Waddell to Project Connect," her obituary said.
Obviously, her former students, pupils, colleagues, relatives or simple acquaintances all gathered at the church where Tammy Waddell's funeral was celebrated, formed a very long line and deposited, at the end of the religious ceremony, backpacks full of school material for the most needy children whose families could not afford to buy them because they were in financial difficulty. At the end of the funeral for this special and selfless teacher, more than 130 backpacks full of diaries, notebooks, pens, pencils, erasers, and so on and so forth had been collected.
