Family, friends to remember Bridgewater Middle's Sheri Myers

— A celebration of life will be held Oct. 15 in the school library for the former reading teacher.

Sheri Myers was passionate about two things — teaching and Disney. So, it’s no surprise that her classroom at Bridgewater Middle School was completely decked out in Walt Disney World and Mickey Mouse gear.

Her motto, “Believe,” was firmly stamped in the minds of her students and reiterated throughout the classroom.

The beloved reading teacher and Reading Department chair, who died of cancer earlier this summer, will be remembered during a celebration of her life at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 15, in the school’s library. Several former students are expected to speak at the service, including Brian Paulsen, a Bridgewater eighth-grader, and Ben Thompson, a West Orange High sophomore who attended Bridgewater.

Thompson plans to share how she hugged him upon meeting him and, at that moment, he said, “I knew immediately that I would love being in her class.”

He wants everyone to know what kind of impact she made on his life.

“I learned so much from her,” Thompson said. “She always had a positive attitude in everything she did. Her motto is ‘Believe.’ That was the biggest thing I could learn from her. Always believe in yourself and others. She had the word in so many places in her classroom, there was nowhere you could look and not feel inspired.”

Paulsen will remember Myers’ constant smile.

“She was always really nice, was always happy,” he said. “I never saw her when she wasn’t smiling.”

He was amazed when he met her and saw her classroom for the first time.

“After I found out that she liked reading and Disney, she was my favorite teacher,” he said.

The most important lesson he learned from Myers is to “never give up things, because it’s not cool,” he said. “She was proud of me for continuing to read.”

He holds dear the Shel Silverstein book “The Giving Tree,” which she presented to him, because he was such a giving individual, she told him.

At next week’s service, Paulsen wants to share some of the moments he had with his favorite teacher.

“It’s such a shame the world had to lose someone so nice to something so terrible,” he said.

His mother, Judy Paulsen, who has three other children, said Myers had been in the family’s nightly prayers.

“That’s the kind of impression she had on my family,” she said. “I’m sad that my younger children won’t get to experience Mrs. Myers.”

The popular reading teacher was first introduced to Bridgewater Middle when she moved from Pennsylvania six years ago to take care of her ill father. She and her husband bought a house near the school in the Summerport neighborhood. She had been a reading teacher up north and had a case of leadership books, so she took the resource materials to Bridgewater to see if they could be of any use there. Several teachers are using them, and there are some in the school’s professional development library.

Robert Ryner, the assistant principal for instruction at Lakeview Middle, previously held this role at Bridgewater and was the one who offered her a position in the reading department

“Whatever she did, she did it with excellence, and she showed everyone how much she cared for them,” Ryner said. “I just really miss her. It was amazing how she pulled people together. She was the center magnet that pulled people from a lot of different areas into one cohesive group. The students just thoroughly respected her. … She had a real love for teaching.”

Myers was originally diagnosed with colon cancer in May 2013. She underwent surgery a month later and started chemotherapy treatments in the fall. They were unsuccessful, and further tests showed she had a “rare” cancer that baffled doctors.

She and her husband sold their house in November and moved back to Pennsylvania to be close to her children.

Melanie Williamson, the sixth-grade reading teacher at Bridgewater, said she misses her friend and co-worker every day.

“She was a much-loved individual,” Williamson said. “She was the epitome of kindness. I can’t tell you how many people she affected with her small acts of kindness. She was all about doing for others and never thought about herself.

“She was a very creative teacher, so students loved never knowing exactly what she had in mind to do. She believed that learning should be fun, and she made a point to make it that way.”

Her joyful spirit will be missed, Williamson said.

Brian Paulsen wants to think of her death this way: “She was reading and got to the last page, and then God said, ‘Come on up here; I have lots of books for you to read.’”