Knightdale —The staff and students at Forestville Road Elementary School carry a lot of Imelda Mills around with them these days.

Only 28, Mills died Oct. 27 in a car accident on her way to a conference for teachers in Ocracoke. They remember Mills as genuine, a soft spoken, but effective problem-solver who smiled with her eyes.

“It still feels like she’s coming back,” said principal Diane Pridgen who watched Mills progress from a first-time teacher to a five-year veteran. “I see what she instilled in her children — the good study habits, the love of learning. I know she’s gone but it still seems she’s here.”

Fifth-grade teacher LaVerne Battle watches her son 10-year-old Jonathan with amazement as he settles down for homework even after the immediate instruction of his beloved teacher is gone.

“Until this year, I’ve always had a fight with Jonathan about sitting down and getting his homework done,” she recalled. “He still does it, even now.” Battle said she doesn’t know exactly how a teacher taught her son a lesson that stuck, but she’s got a hunch.

“He felt that she truly loved him,” she said. ... He internalized it — I have the ability to be truly successful.” Battle said her son took the death hard.

“He cried buckets,” she recalled. “He didn’t want to go back to school.” Pridgen believes the students will not only have an indelible picture of Ms. Mills, the fourth grade teacher who believed in them, but that her death will be a defining moment in their lives. For many it will be an introduction to death’s reality.

Always educators, the staff is teaching about how to deal with death by honoring Mills.

Beginning this year, the school will present the Imelda Mills Character Education Award to a students in grades K-2 and 3-5 who demonstrate outstanding character and leadership, like Mills, Pridgen said.

The $1,500 her friends gave in her memory will be used to buy books about a variety of countries and cultures for the library as a tribute.

The PTA-planned Falcon statute, the schools mascot, will be inscribed with a sentence or two that Mills’ inspires.

Even after the psychologists and counselors left the school, Pridgen invited her husband, Sam, two brothers and sister to talk to Mills’ classroom to remember her.

And two weeks ago, the students wrote messages to her on red balloons filled with helium and released them skyward.

“The students initiated it,” said Michelle Arpey, fourth grade lead teacher.

Arpey, not only a colleague, but a friend, recalled Mills’ striking marriage to Sam, a former teacher at Southeast Raleigh High School.

They were soul mates, she said, together seven years and married two of those. She was 11-weeks pregnant.

“I think she cared more about not just making students understand how to write properly, the facts of history, but about educating the whole child,” said Sam Mills, who will graduate with a law degree from Campbell University in May.

Mills said his wife was soft-spoken but believed in people respecting one another and stood up for herself and others when times called for it. Imelda was always busy —with school work and homework. She was working on a reading master’s from N.C. State and earned a 4.0 gradepoint average, Mills said. He often wished he had more of her time.

“It makes me feel proud to hear of the things she did not because of praise but because she held herself to a high standard,” he said. Pridgen recalled when she complimented Mills in a staff meeting, she was often embarrassed at the attention from being singled out.

Kenzie Hood, also a fourth grade teacher, said because of Mills’ character and accessibility she sought her out for questions about her own professional and personal life.

“Imelda had a sensitive way about her that came naturally for her,” said Sally Whitley, new to the fourth grade staff at Forestville this year. “...I noticed that Imelda made sure there was a place for me.

She would rearrange things and say, ‘Here, Sally Whitley.’ She helped me feel included and a part of the group.”

Third grade teacher Rachel Froelich, also new to Forestville, said Mills’ calm, quiet, demeanor made a valuable contribution to her son Patrick Smithwick’s ease in settling in from New Bern.

“She accepted their flaws and she knew their strengths,” she said. “She made the children feel so respected and secure, they could focus on nothing but learning.”