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When Imelda Mills died Nov. 3 at the age of 28, the blow was a hard one to take at Forestville Elementary School in Knightdale.

Mills, a fourth grade teacher at the school, was killed in a car accident on her way to Ocracoke Island to a teaching Island conference.

Forestville Road Elementary School Principal Diane Pridgen believes the moment will be a defining one for students, much like a moment she had as a seventh grader when JFK was assassinated.

While a president is mourned by a nation and remembered by history, the loss of a teacher is felt more immediately, and sometimes more viscerally.

Parent and teacher at Forestville Rachel Froelich noted the amount of time a teacher spends with students, often more waking hours than even a parent during a day school day.

Froelich was grateful to Mills for the way she "knew" her son, and helped ease the transition to their new home in Knightdale from New Bern.

There were others like Froelich --- both moms and teachers, hit doubly by the blow.

And there were her fourth grade colleagues and friends who remembered their smiling friend even through difficulties, a woman whose sensitivity to others translated into accessible friend and caring teacher.

There were plenty of tears as the staff remembered her as I spoke with them about her for a newspaper story.

Froelich called Mills a natural born teacher, and others said her calm, easy demeanor instilled security in her students. Still others said she genuinely loved her students which changed them as students and as people.

While the staff at Forestville Road Elementary took the blow hard, they have always been the educators, reaching out to students and parents with ways to cope with death. Of course, there were the psychologists and counselors that came to the school, as is school system policy.

But they also invited Mills' family to her classroom for heart-to-heart chats with the children. They are remembering the qualities of their friend and colleague with a special leadership-character award for students.

And those $1,500 Mills' friends gave to the school in her memory will be used to buy library books about diverse cultures and about many countries.

All of those are honorable ways to mourn. And to teach.