School community rallies around Waller family
Weeks later, Elena Manning cried.
It sprang up in a random moment, looking at a photo of 4-year-old triplets wearing sunglasses. The reaction arrived suddenly, violently, but it didn’t surprise her.
The principal, like many at Yardville Elementary School, had begun to decompress.
Life at Yardville Elementary may never return to the way it was before Sept. 25, 2014. That day, Andy and Suzie Waller discovered their 4-year-old son Eli, one of those triplets, had stopped breathing sometime during the night. Nine days later, the Centers for Disease Control confirmed Eli had become the first person to succumb to Enterovirus D68, a respiratory ailment that afflicts children and their immature immune systems.
Eli’s death triggered a lot of things—panic from concerned parents, misinformation from media outlets and rumor-mongers anxious to fill information gaps, sadness on the face of anyone who knew Eli or merely had seen a photo of his shy smile.
But, in the days and weeks following the tragedy, the strongest reaction came in the form of a groundswell of support for the Wallers from around the world. The boy’s father, Andy, even had to admit that though no good could erase the passing of his son, the positives certainly had begun catching up to the negatives.
Like the panic of the early days, much of this support originated at Yardville Elementary School.
“They’ve been incredible,” Andy Waller said. “The whole community, they’ve been off-the-charts amazing.”
By mid-October, life had calmed. The halls of Yardville Elementary were quiet, at least as much as an elementary school could be. And the school community began the difficult task of proceeding after the sudden, tragic death of one of their own.
It was a far cry from the days immediately after Eli’s death, when television news vans—sometimes as many as 20—surrounded the school and parents frantically called Lori Wisser, in her first year as Yardville Elementary PTA president, for some reassurance that their children wouldn’t have the same fate Eli did.
But, somehow, in those moments, Manning, Wisser and others at Yardville managed to think beyond the hysteria while living in the center of it. School nurse Alison Timmons came up with an idea to put up bows of blue and gold—Yardville School colors—around the school and the town. A Chesterfield resident, Timmons said her community did something similar after a bus crash killed a girl there in February 2012.
A week after Eli’s death, Wisser and a crew of volunteers made 250 blue-and-gold bows, one for every family in the school. They sent the bows home with students Oct. 3, so that they could put them outside.
“The word got out, and we’ve been making bows nonstop since,” Wisser said.
Wisser estimates about 400 bows have been made, but she’s lost exact count. Lisa Gruschow, Ceil Plunkett and Theresa Povio—who all taught the Waller children at Yardville—have made smaller, wearable bow-shaped pins that have become in-demand as far afield as the United Kingdom.
The Yardville Elementary PTA also arranged a “Wear Blue and Gold Day” fundraiser, where staff and students at all the Hamilton schools were encouraged to wear Yardville colors in exchange for $1. The 280 students at Yardville Elementary donated more than $700. Schools across the district responded similarly, giving thousands of dollars in aid for the Waller family.
District staff chipped in, too, donating $60 per person for the right to wear jeans to work every Friday through the end of January. That money went toward new “big girl beds” and furniture for Eli’s sisters, Sydney and Ava. Members of the Yardville School community have also assisted the Wallers in painting rooms and moving things around at home, with hopes a semi-new environment will aid the family’s healing.
All this wasn’t based off of some long-established camaraderie. The Wallers were fairly new at Yardville Elementary School, and Manning admitted she didn’t know the family all that well before the last week in September. She knew Suzie’s face. She met Andy Waller for the first time at Eli’s funeral.
But she knew Eli, who started at Yardville Elementary last year, at 3, and quickly became a staff favorite. “A precious little blondie,” Manning called him.
Sydney and Ava joined Eli at school this year, all three in the morning session of Yardville’s inclusive preschool class. The Wallers live in the part of Hamilton that sends students to Kisthardt Elementary School, but were able to send Eli to Yardville Elementary since he had some speech and developmental delays. Yardville’s program matched his needs.
In his short time at Yardville, barely more than a year, Eli already had made a name for himself, and the Wallers have done their part to ensure Eli lives on at the school. They have given the school a tree donated in Eli’s memory, to be planted by the playground. Inside, a plaque made by one of Andy Waller’s friends, a woodworker, will hang in the hallway as part of a display the school has dubbed “the Waller Wall of Fame.” There, students can display work they’re proud of, a nod to Eli’s frequent questioning—“Are you proud with me, Dad?”
For the most part, the students at Yardville have remained relatively unaffected. There are some small changes—students have pledged to wash their hands and cough into their arms, Timmons has given every class hand-washing lessons, periodic announcements of “Now’s a good time to go wash your hands” reinforce the good hygiene lessons. Cleaning has been ramped up all over the district, not just at Yardville Elementary, with more staff doing more thorough cleaning.
Some students asked about the boy who died. Crisis teams were on-hand at Yardville Elementary for awhile, and school staff members did what they could to help ease any despair, while struggling with their own. The preschoolers and their parents felt the loss most acutely and more immediately.
“They felt the loss, and their kids were so little,” Timmons said. “They were the ones we helped the most. We gave them the most guidance because how do you tell a 4-year old?”
Manning and her staff had to hold themselves together at first, but that time has passed. She has more time to reflect lately on what she experienced, and even the thought of a positive response to the tragedy can be enough to trigger a tear.
Reflection can be a dangerous thing, full of self-doubt and second guessing. Manning has no such problems.
“Would I have done things differently?” Manning said. “I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s anything I can look back on and say, ‘God, I wish I had done that differently,’ because I really think I did all I could and did all the right things. I’ve learned a lot, mostly about the resilience of people and their kindness and generosity.
“It’s been a horrific start to the school year, but it’s worse for the Wallers. And that’s all I keep thinking; I can’t complain.”
Teachers Theresa Povio, Lisa Gruschow and Ceil Plunkett with the Waller triplets’ class at Yardville Elementary School Oct. 17, 2014. All staff and students in the Hamilton School District were encouraged to wear blue and gold that day in honor of Eli. (Photo by Suzette J. Lucas.),
