The people at Langtree Elementary School had no idea Friday, March 4 would be the last normal day they’d have.
After all, there was no sign of anything being out of the ordinary. Kindergarten teacher Julie Smith was in the center of all the action, as usual, taking pictures of students during a Read Across America event, collecting cereal boxes the children had donated, joking with kids and staff alike.
She ribbed fellow Kindergarten teacher Sue Morsell for wearing a pair of sunglasses in school to mask a case of pink eye, calling Morsell “Stevie Wonder” and singing Wonder’s songs at her. And Morsell laughed, as she usually did when her grade partner was involved—this is the Julie Smith everyone at Langtree expected and loved.
At the end of the day, Smith walked over to Morsell, hugged her and said, “Go take care of yourself. Fix your eyes, Stevie.” She started singing Wonder’s “I Just Called To Say I Love You.” The teachers traded verses, hugged again, and Morsell left.
After taking care of a few more things in her classroom that afternoon, Smith went into the school’s main office, and interrupted a meeting between a teacher and Langtree principal Joyce Gallo by sitting on the teacher’s lap and playing with her hair. Everyone laughed—Julie being Julie.
Once she had her fun, Smith said, “Have a good weekend, everyone. See you on Monday.” And then, she was gone.
Smith died suddenly and unexpectedly the next day, March 5, of undisclosed causes at age 49. She had showed no signs that she wouldn’t be in school Monday, let alone ever again. As her coworkers struggled to come to grips with her death, they only had one explanation—that it proved what they always said about Smith. She was larger than life.
No one at Langtree Elementary can recall ever meeting someone like Julie Smith. It had seemed impossible to live the way she did, constantly and genuinely no less. If they had some sort of warning, maybe they would have followed Smith’s example while she was still here: to take no person for granted, to love fully and intensely, to seize any and every opportunity to express gratitude, to laugh without care, to prioritize others’ problems over your own.
But, as it is, the folks at Langtree have decided to honor Smith the only way they know—by carrying on the way Smith would. They admit recovering from her death will be a long process but, as Smith herself would say, there’s nothing hugs and lots of love can’t solve.
Smith learned at a young age to appreciate those around her. She was born in San Francisco, and moved around the West Coast with her mother and stepfather, a migrant farmer. She was homeless for a spell as a child, the inspiration for a children’s book she wrote in 2012, called “Hearts For The Homeless.” In adulthood, she had a small family—a husband, Denny, and a young daughter, Tiffany, with whom she lived in Medford, and an adult son, Brandon Killian, who lives in North Carolina. But she counted everyone she came across as family.
“If you were in a group and just meeting her, by the time you left, you knew Julie Smith,” said Lisa Schulz, a former PTA vice president and one of Smith’s first room mothers at Langtree. “She made a point of getting to really know people. Everybody was close to her. If you knew her, you were close to her.”
She treasured the people around her. A fellow teacher going through a stressful time might find a stuffed animal on her desk, with a card of encouragement, signed “Lots of Love, Julie.” Every holiday, Smith would bring treats in for the staff. And if anyone gave Smith anything, they could expect a hug and, a few moments later, a thank-you note. Gallo has a basket in her office stacked high with notes from Smith.
Kindergarten teacher Jessica Namur got married last year, and Smith planned her bridal shower. Namur said she wasn’t surprised her co-worker was the one to take the lead.
“No matter what she was going through, she would be the first person to be there for me,” Namur said. “Anything that was going on in my life, she was there with hugs, love. That’s how she was. She always went over the top for you. And sometimes it was like you didn’t feel deserving of it. I would always say, ‘Julie, you’re too much. You do too much.’ For the littlest thing, she went so big.”
Smith had developed the reputation as staff cheerleader at Langtree, rallying people for school events and even creating a few events of her own to boost spirit. In September, she’d celebrate “Talk Like A Pirate Day” by encouraging staff members to dress like pirates. She’d wear a pirate captain outfit, and take her students running around the school on a treasure hunt she planned out. Throughout the day, she’d poke her head into classrooms, and surprise other teachers by unleashing an “Arrrr.”
Each year, on the 100th Day of School, she’d come in with grey hair, glasses and walker, acting like an 100-year-old woman. Langtree had a Disney Day last month—just days before Smith’s death—and Smith told Morsell and Namur they had to dress up as a group. She wanted to be Cinderella.
“She was so happy,” Morsell said. “I could hear her princess heels clacking down the hall all day. That was what Julie was all about—getting in there and creating those memories for the kids and the staff. When I think of her, that’s what I see. I see her in her Cinderella outfit, just enjoying herself. She was the princess, and the staff all knows it. Who would be the princess of the school? It would be Julie.”
Her desire to help people had a serious side, too. She was a volunteer firefighter in Willingboro and Mount Laurel. In an effort to explain the 9/11 attacks to children, she wrote a book called “September 11, 2006: I Have a Dream” that tackled the subject; a number of Hamilton’s elementary schools still use it when teaching about 9/11. To explain Hurricane Katrina, she wrote another, “Standing For The Red, White and Blue.”
She led a number of social justice projects at Langtree. During the 2011-12 school year, when she released “Hearts For The Homeless,” she organized an effort by the same name at Langtree. The school collected thousands of items and dollars for Homefront, a nonprofit that aims to end homelessness in Mercer County. No one at Langtree had ever seen such a sustained enthusiasm for a project.
But, above all, she took her job as a teacher seriously—even if she never showed it while running around dressed like a pirate captain or a princess.
She started teaching in Hamilton in 2007, first at Kuser Elementary before transferring to Langtree in 2010. For all but one of those years at Langtree, she taught Kindergarten. She loved being a child’s first teacher and embraced the dual mother-teacher role Kindergartners needed her to play.
She had strong views on education and the best way to teach young children. In an era where scores and metrics reign, Smith pushed back. She encouraged curiosity and learning through play. She wanted her students to take risks. She’d spray shaving cream all over the tables in her classroom as a science experiment and make vocabulary lessons fun by singing. She taught the importance of manners, of compassion, of relating to other people.
“Kindergarten has become the new first grade, which makes it tough because it’s an age where you really don’t have social skills,” Namur said. “She taught kids how to be people in the world. Not necessarily how to be top of the class academically, but she showed them so much love and personality and kindness. She was a role model. She taught them how to be a good human.”
In Smith’s absence, a dense, still air filled the hallways at Langtree Elementary School. Everyone there had to not only process the shock and grief of losing Smith, but also figure out how to move ahead without the woman who served as a guide for students and staff alike. The staff gathered the day after Smith died, a Sunday, to grieve as a group before the children came to school the next day. They talked about how to address what had happened with the children and how they wanted to honor Smith. They shared stories. They cried.
That Monday—March 7—they were about as ready as they’d ever be to face Langtree without their co-worker. During morning announcements, Gallo gave a heartfelt speech about the Kindergarten teacher. She told the students to think about the happiness Smith had given them, and do their best to continue with that happiness.
This was a work in progress. While doing rounds, Gallo caught the eye of one boy in the back of Smith’s classroom. He looked at the principal, then put his head down and started to cry. Other students grappled with the finality of what had transpired. One Kindergartner asked Morsell if she thought Smith would come back if they all wished for it. A first grader asked if there was school in heaven; she knew that Mrs. Smith wouldn’t let anything—even death—keep her from teaching.
“That’s the hard part,” Morsell said. “They’re little, and they’re trying to make sense to something that doesn’t make sense to you.”
In the weeks that followed, the school community firmed up how it wanted to honor Smith. It will put a “Lots of Love bench” near the school playground, a place where children who are lonely, sad or feel bullied can go. The theory is that other students will see a peer in need of comfort, and follow Smith’s example by providing lots of love.
Every student wrote a memory of Smith on a paper heart, and the school put them in a booklet. They gave copies of the book to Smith’s son and daughter.
But perhaps the most fitting tribute happened March 11, when the school encouraged students to wear pink, Smith’s favorite color. Every classroom came up with messages for Smith, and wrote them on a piece of paper that looked like a bow. Teachers attached all the bows to a long piece of string, then tied the string to a giant pink balloon. Gallo called it “the biggest balloon I’ve seen in my life.”
Teachers, students and parents gathered outside Langtree Elementary—Smith’s home for the last six years—and watched as Gallo released the balloon. It floated skyward, up and up, until the clouds swallowed it and the folks at Langtree couldn’t see it anymore.
But they knew it was still there, somewhere. Just like Julie Smith.
Donations can be made to the Julie Ann Smith Memorial Fund, PO Box 1542, Medford, NJ 08055. All contributions will go to support Tiffany Smith’s education.
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Staff and students at Langtree Elementary wore pink in honor of Julie Smith. Students wrote messages to Smith and tied them to pink balloons, which were released up into the clouds.,
