eulogy
Mrs. Bain and the Butterfly Effect — Tribute from the Teachers and Students of Harmar School
A short tribute to Terrie Lee Bain written for children by the teachers and students of Harmar Elementary School in Marietta, where she had served as Title I teacher. First read at the school's end-of-year assembly on the last day of school in May 2017; then, at Chuck's request and with his aunts' agreement, included in the printed program of Terrie's memorial service on 8 July 2017 and read aloud there by Chuck.
This year the butterfly reminded us that we can change.
There is another lesson that we can learn from the butterfly: small actions, even as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wings, can have large, important results. Scientists named this the “butterfly effect.”
The butterfly effect applies to people too. What we do and say matters! What we say and do can cause changes that go on forever.
Mrs. Bain is not famous like Dr. Seuss and J.K. Rowling, but what she said and did has already had important results.
Mrs. Bain treated everyone with great kindness and shared her love of books and reading. Everyone Mrs. Bain shared with can now share with someone else. And those people, the tall and the small, will share kindness and the love of reading and books with someone else.
Imagine how many people will be treated with great kindness and love reading and books because of Mrs. Bain.
That’s the butterfly effect!!
Where the tribute was first read
This tribute was composed at Harmar Elementary School in Marietta — where Terrie had been the Title I teacher in her last years — and first read at the school’s end-of-year assembly on the last day of school in May 2017. The arrangement was put together by Cheryl Cook of the Marietta City Schools, and described by her in a June 7, 2017 email to Chuck:
“This brief tribute was read at our assembly on the last day of school. The choir sang ‘I Believe’, a song which Terrie enjoyed hearing the students practice in the music room across the hall from her classroom. One student from each homeroom and the four staff members who worked most closely with Terrie ( Ellen, Jean, Sandy, Anne ) released balloons as the song ended.”
That last detail — the four colleagues from Terrie’s hallway, the song she’d liked through the wall, the balloons rising over a school assembly — is the truest version of the tribute. The memorial service two months later was a second reading, brought there at Chuck’s request because his aunts agreed it belonged in the program.
Sources: composed May 2017 by the Teachers and Students of Harmar Elementary School, Marietta, Ohio; shared with Chuck by Cheryl Cook of the Marietta City Schools on 7 June 2017; read at the Harmar end-of-year assembly (May 2017) and at the memorial service for Terrie Lee Bain (8 July 2017, Hadley Funeral Home Reno Chapel, Marietta) by Chuck Eesley.