Bayfield School District lost a treasured member of its staff on Nov. 30 after a battle with a rare disease.

Seventh and eighth grade Bayfield Middle School teacher Michelle Wennerstrom suffered from atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome, which is a rare disease that causes tiny blood clots to form in the small blood vessels in the body. These blood clots can block blood flow to important organs, such as the kidneys.

Her loss has been heavily felt by her daughter and those who worked with her in the school district.

“I’ve talked to every teacher that’s posted on her wall or sent me letters, said that the school is just not the same without her,” said Wennerstorm’s daughter, Kira Gullion. “She would always be laughing and bringing joy to everybody.”

Wennerstrom was well-known for making students think about how their actions impact the world around them. Most notably, during the hate segment of her English class.

She taught about the hatred that sparked the Holocaust. After reading from a selection of books including “Night” and “The Diary of Anne Frank,” students were given the name of a child from the Holocaust to write a letter to. In these letters, they’d open up about hatred they might have harbored and take steps to resolve it.

Many of the students took the project to heart, writing about middle school bullies or family members who had hurt them.

Gullion said many of the students who wrote letters to Wennerstrom after they left Bayfield Middle School touched on how the English class project affected their lives.

Wennerstrom was not only a teacher, but a friendly face for students who may have been going through hard times.

Gullion said Wennerstrom always kept snacks at her desk in case a student was hungry.

“She always had an open classroom for students to come in and just eat with her and get snacks if they were hungry, or she would always back in the day, she’d buy them sodas in the vending machine if they’d asked her to because a lot of students being in Bayfield don’t come from privileged households,” Gullion said.

Recently appointed Bayfield School District board president Rebecca Parnell said all three of her children had Wennerstrom as a teacher.

“She knew just how to get her students interested in what she was teaching,” Parnell said. “She loved her students and it was obvious that teaching wasn’t just a job – it was her passion. It’s a huge loss to not have her with us.”

Former colleague of 17 years Molly Morningstar said Wennerstrom was an instrumental part of her life. Morningstar started as an English teacher at Bayfield Middle School in 2006 when she was just 21 years old.

“I had no idea what I was doing … She was my guide and my support system,” she said.

Morningstar said she will always remember and miss the sound of Wennerstrom’s boisterous laugh, which rang throughout the halls of the school.

“She would always kind of debrief with people outside her door and they’d be sharing stories, and you could hear her hilariously loud laugh all the way down to the end of the hallway. And everybody knew she was around the corner,” she said.

Much like everyone else who came in touch with Wennerstrom, Morningstar alluded to Wennerstrom’s Holocaust unit as something she would be remembered for during her tenure.

The two oversaw the English-language Arts department for the entire school. Morningstar said that even when Wennerstrom was bedridden because of her illness, she was still grading papers and thinking about her students.

“She wasn’t supposed to be, but she wanted to be because she just was she never quit worrying about her students ever,” Morningstar said.

One of those students who was greatly impacted and inspired by Wennerstrom’s teaching was Tara Piña.

Piña now teaches English at Springville Junior High School in Springville, Utah.

“Eighth grade is an awkward teenage time and she just loved people through that awkward time and showed them that they could be authentic and be who you are,” Piña said.

She said Wennerstrom’s work teaching students how to navigate hatred was extremely important to her and how she approaches teaching her students about the civil rights movement.

However, the most important takeaway for Piña was how Wennerstrom taught students how people deserved to be treated.

“I don’t remember like the specifics of what she taught me. I remember how she treated people and the example that she led by, her attitude, who she was as a person and the relationships that she built more than the specific content of her class,” Piña said. “I think that’s an important life lesson. It’s not so much about the specific events in the spirit, like the minutia of things. It’s how you show up for people.”

Gullion described Wennerstrom as a selfless parent.

She said when she and her husband opened their store, Bee Thrifty, it was initially a struggle.

“We were really struggling to keep our store open. And every night she would make us food and deliver us food,” she said. “If I asked her to go somewhere to pick up some clothes for the store, she’d do it in a heartbeat.”

Gullion also recalls all of the obstacles she had to take on when first starting at Bayfield Middle School. This included remodeling Gullion’s childhood home, earning her master’s degree and raising her two kids.

“We were very young and she was getting her master's while she was working on the house. She was always working really hard to do what's best for everybody. And I just think she was very special in that way,” Gullion said.

tbrown@durangoherald.com