- April 26, 2024
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How will we be remembered when we die? Our society at times seems to honor in grand ways some people who are not always so grand. But this week I had a chance to see a school community honor a woman in a humble but loving way.
When I arrived at Bunnell Elementary School on the morning of Friday, May 30, I met Amy Canna, vice president of the Parent Teacher Organization, who was standing outside the front office of the school. There, a plot of land had been covered with fresh mulch and dotted with newly planted pink flowers. An arc of flat stones formed a walkway to a simple, brown bench that bore a plaque with the following words:
In Memory of Dawn Renee Fisch: A Dedicated BES PTO Volunteer
Canna explained that, among many other volunteer hours over the previous few years, Fisch had helped collect tabs from soda cans for the Ronald McDonald Pop Tab contest, of which Bunnell Elementary was the Flagler County winner. Canna accepted a check for $500 as a prize last year.
Then Canna realized that she hadn’t seen Fisch in a while. This was a woman who volunteered everywhere: She was at the concession stand and at the nurse's office. She blew up balloons for school dances. She helped kids cash in their Buster Bucks for toys at the school store for good behavior.
Canna later learned Fisch had died on March 26, 2013. She was 43 and a mother of three, a grandmother of one.
Last Friday, a little more than a year later, Canna and a small group of PTO members, school employees, Cub Scouts and family members gathered to remember Fisch by dedicating a bench, made of recycled materials, in her honor. The memorial was paid for with the check from the Pop Tab contest.
“Volunteers come and go, but they do a lot for the school and not to be remembered would be sad,” Canna said.
Another volunteer, Michele Crosson, said, “You really have to care about the school and your children and the community in order to give of your time. This is something that nobody knows about unless you're involved yourself. There's no glory in being a school volunteer.”
Dawn’s husband, Robert Fisch, joined his two younger sons, Zackary and Luke, at the bench that morning, as well. Robert Fisch said his wife, who lived on the same street in Korona as he did when they children, was plagued by arthritis for years, and it ultimately weakened her to the point that she spent the three months in the hospital in early 2013. She was released but then died a week later.
The Bunnell Elementary community responded, he said. “Teachers had flowers at my house the next day.”
He added: “It's been a long year. I learned all the stuff she really did behind the doors. Any single mom out there, they don't got it easy.”
April 6, 2013, would have been Robert and Dawn Fisch’s 19-year wedding anniversary.
Shirley Beville, Dawn’s grandmother, attended the brief ceremony outside Bunnell Elementary. She remembered Dawn this way: “She was always there if I needed her, just like she was here for the school. She was my only granddaughter. And I can't believe this, what they have done here for her — just for one person — for a big school to honor her like she worked for the school. But she had all kinds of friends, and anytime anybody needed anything, even if she was sick, she was there.”
Canna asked Jason Stanier, cub master of Pack 437, of Santa Maria Del Mar Catholic Church, to help, so he brought the scouts to spread mulch the previous Sunday to prepare the grounds for the bench installation. His children, Robert and Savannah Stanier, attended the dedication, as did the following cub scouts: Donald Graybeard, Maurice Cauldwell, Stanley Gatzek, Richard Van Leer and Kaleb Perdue.
Stanier said afterward: “Someone's going to ask, ‘Who is Dawn?’ And they're going to say, ‘She was a volunteer at Bunnell Elementary.’”
And to everyone in attendance at the ceremony, that felt like as good an honor as any.
