BFMS Memorial Honors Late Teacher

honored a beloved teacher Monday night with a ceremony featuring student and faculty tributes.

Bettie Miller, who taught children with special needs, passed away suddenly on May 19, according to school officials.  

More than 100 people – a majority wearing red in honor of Miller’s sorority Delta Sigma Theta – attended the memorial celebration. Colleagues, students, sorority sisters and Miller’s family gathered for a tree-planting ceremony in the school’s garden and took in a night of song, dance and touching visual tributes.

“We are truly privilged to know someone in the form of Bettie Miller – our teacher, our friend, our colleague,” said BFMS Principal Lennox Small. “She was beautiful inside and out. She was beautiful when she transformed young lives. And to see her in her classroom was a thing of beauty. To see her in the hallway how she transformed students who were not even in her classroom – because to Bettie Miller, every single student at Benjamin Franklin Middle School was her student. Bettie Miller was beautiful.”

ESL and Spanish teacher Hilary Almeida played guitar and sang Violeta Parra’s Gracias a la Vida (Thanks to Life)  with musician Reggie Pittman accompanying her on percussion.

“Every single day that I came over from TJ (), I had Bettie Miller to be funny with, to tell me a joke, to smile, to make me feel connected to the BF community,” Almeida said. “I miss her very much every single day.”

At the end of the evening, Miller’s son, Jack Crews, thanked everyone for the tribute in honor of his mother.

“It’s awfully fitting that her last memorial service is in a school, surrounded by students, teachers and her sorority sisters,” Crews said. “That was – and on top of family – that was her circle. It meant the world to her to give something to someone who was in need or who didn’t need or just to give of herself.”

During one segment of the evening, some of Miller’s students read letters out loud on a prerecorded video. The students shared how Miller was a wonderful, kind teacher who made them feel special and loved.

Seventh-grader Dannette Yahn was a student of Miller's in the fifth and sixth grade. Prior to the ceremony, Yahn described how Miller made a difference in her life, helping her to transition out of all special-education classes into mainstream classes.

“She’d tell everyone what a wonderful student I was. She supported me and always told me to do my best,” said Yahn, who now makes the honor roll in nearly all her classes. “I’ll remember how she always had a smile on her face and how she’d put a smile on your face.”