Teachers may never truly know the impact they leave on their students.
Teachers may never truly know the impact they leave on their students.
But, as Jerry Whittle — longtime teacher, author and mentor for the blind — once said, “To teach is to touch a life forever.”
And for more than 35 years, Mary Bernadette Von Lindern, affectionately known as “Coach Mare,” embodied Whittle’s words as a physical education teacher at St. Mary Catholic School in Chardon.
She died unexpectedly May 2, leaving a void in the hearts of many who loved and adored her.
“Coach’s teaching career was truly a vocation in life,” said Deacon Larry Boehnlein during Mare’s funeral mass May 18 at St. Mary Catholic Church. “It was her vocation. She did it out of a love of her students and always had the best interests of her students at heart.”
Coach Mare attended St. John’s Elementary School in Waterloo, Belgium, and thrived in athletics in high school in New Jersey despite having asthma.
She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in physical education at Kent State University and became a member of Delta Gamma Sorority. She began her teaching career in New Jersey and then in England, at a Department of Defense Education Activity school for girls and boys, according to her obituary.
Eventually, she landed at St. Mary, the Dioceses of Cleveland, where she taught students from all-day pre- kindergarten through eighth-grade.
This year, she taught 181 students.
“Since she volunteered so often and in so many different ways, she touched so many people’s lives,” St. Mary School Principal Julie Fedak said. “Coach’s passing affected the entire school family, students, parents, teachers, alumni and parish.”
To help with the grief, the school held a standing-room-only prayer service the Friday following Coach Mare’s passing.
“We all benefited from her supportive spirit and generous nature,” Fedak said. “Even the parents of some of our current students remember having Coach when they were in school at St. Mary’s.”
She was known for her unselfish heart and volunteered a great deal of time for various events, including Catholic Youth Organization events, the annual Appalachian Toy Drive and Lenten fish fry’s.
“Some would say that she made the best French fries around,” Fedak added.
On Thanksgiving, you could find her delivering meals or serving them at local shelters.
During Christmas, she would purchase toys for the school’s Toys for Appalachia service project. Coach Mare would find the best deals on new toys hitting sales on Thanksgiving as she drove home from serving meals at the hunger center.
Then, in all of her classes, students would set a goal to earn toys to send, with some grades working on their basketball skills and others, on bowling.
“She wanted the students to see that their effort can help those in need,” Fedak said.
If a family was in need, Coach Mare would always find a way to help by organizing a drive or by collecting aluminum pull tabs to cash in for a donation, according to family and friends.
Art teacher MaryAnn Marra said when she thinks of Coach Mare, who was known to collect quotes, the following anonymous one comes to mind: “Those we love never leave us, they just become our guardian angels in the outfield.”
She will miss their 3:30 p.m. chats in the art room.
“We had a really good friendship,” Marra said. “We love doing what we’re doing.”
Marra’s voice trembled when she recalled a very meaningful gift Mare gave to her.
Both friends admired Betty White and especially held onto the “Thank you for being my friend” message White was known for.
One day, Coach Mare surprised her with a photo of White and the quote, which hangs in her classroom.
Kara Passow, St. Mary’s director of faith formation, first met “Miss V” when Coach Mare was her eighth-grade gym teacher.
It was Coach Mare’s first year teaching at St. Mary and gym was held in the church across the street next to the rectory that she called “the Colosseum,” which has since been torn down.
After Passow graduated from college, she came back to teach at St. Mary.
“By this time, the kids were calling her ‘Coach,’” she said. “I would also call her ‘Coach’ as I felt strange calling her by her first name being that she was my teacher once upon a time. I continued to call her ‘Coach’ and she would call me ‘Mrs. PasSOW’”
She said Coach Mare remembered all of her students and would attend their sporting events, even when they moved on to high school.
Passow, organizer of the annual toy drive event, loved working with Coach Mare, recalling how she would line the toys on the bleachers and when students won the challenge she set for them, they would be able to pick a toy from the bleacher and add it to the box.
Coach Mare would then make a big heart to tape to the box that read, “To the friends in Grahn, Ky., with lots of love and prayers from the students at St. Mary and Coach.”
In recent years, they started to send a new bike or two.
“Each year, she would say she was going to make the trek to Kentucky, but something always came up,” Passow said. “This year, she made it. She finally got to go and see where the donations were going and got to meet the people. She loved the whole experience. She was really looking forward to going again.”
Coach Mare was a very faithful person, attending mass each week. Just like her parking spot out front, she had a seat in church where she always sat, Passow said, adding she would always talk to the students about doing the right thing and being faithful to “The Good Lord.”
Coach Mare’s sister, Kathy, of Midlothian, Va., offered remarks of remembrance on behalf of Mare’s family and thanked everyone for coming during the funeral mass.
She said the most difficult deaths are the ones that are unexpected.
“Mare used the gifts God gave her to become a teacher at a Catholic school,” Kathy said.
She left listeners with a bit of homework to do, asking them to reflect on what Coach Mare taught them about God.
“I would just want people to know that Coach Mare Von Lindern was a wonderful woman of faith and a disciple of Jesus Christ,” Rev. Scott Goodfellow said. “She took an active interest in the wellbeing of each and every one of her students. She continued to support them even after they graduated. Her death is a huge loss for our school, parish and Chardon community.”
Passow said Coach Mare would not want people to be sad.
“She would not want us making a big fuss,” she said. “She would want us to go out and make a difference in the world.”
