Duran North Junior High and Pell City lost a teacher and a friend last weekend when Kathy Shelton died.

Students and faculty spent many hours this week celebrating her life and telling stories about how she touched the life of everyone she came in contact with.

A memorial wall was assembled honoring her in the upstairs corridor of the school. Cards and writings filled that area. “Thank you” and “you will be truly missed” were common themes.

Shelton was a vivacious person, who went out of her way to ensure that no student came into or left her classroom or theater troop practices without a smile on their face.

“People were talking at the lunch table about the words she used, like ‘Fabulous Friday’ and ‘Marvelous Monday.’ She was always extremely upbeat,” Duran North principal Karen Davis said.

Davis said that a Duran football player came to her and mentioned that he was never bored in Mrs. Shelton’s class. “She was filled with fun,” the student told his principal.

This Halloween, her students got to enjoy a day filled with fun. Mrs. Shelton incorporated a fog machine and dressed in a witch’s garb, told her students scary stories and let them share urban legends with each other; illustrating to them that truth and meaning are important lessons to learn.

Her theater group performed ‘Believe’ as their Christmas program for other schools in the Pell City area and last week they did a marvelous job.

Her motto was always “The show must go on” and faculty and friends referred to her often as their leading lady. “She really put a smile on everyone’s face everyday,” Davis said.

She cared greatly for her husband Kyle, a Duran South teacher and former editor of the News-Aegis. Anyone that knows them would recognize immediately how much he cared deeply for her, too.

“She always referred to him as ‘Mr. Shelton,’” Davis recalled with a smile. “Mr. Shelton and I have a date night tonight” or “Mr. Shelton and I were at the store the other day…” were common phrases people heard from Kathy Shelton.

“She talked so much about her husband and it made us all realize what a caring relationship they had,” Davis said. The Shelton’s often took care of Kathy’s two grandsons. They doted on the boys.

She wasn’t just a regular daytime teacher. Davis said that Duran now has four people working from now until Christmas just to take on Mrs. Shelton’s extra curricular workload in drama and other activities.

“She loved what she did. She didn’t just work from eight to three. She took work home and she took it to heart and her students to heart, too” Davis said. “One of the ways she did that was through showmanship and entertainment. She believed that for students to listen and learn, that things needed to be interesting and that it had to catch their attention. She knew that and incorporated it in everything she did. It was an interesting element to her work ethic. She brought something out-of-the-ordinary to everything she did.”