‘The light in the room’: Lee’s Summit community mourns teacher, coach killed in crash
Family and friends remember Lee’s Summit High School teacher Rachel Stone as someone who always smiled through life’s hardest moments, inspiring everyone around her to be better.
“She was the light in the room,” Jeramy LaFollette, Stone’s stepbrother, told The Star on Friday.
The Lee’s Summit community is mourning the loss of Stone, a 20-year veteran of the school district, where she served as a physical education and health teacher, as well as the girls’ assistant volleyball coach. Stone, 47, died Thursday morning in a crash when a tractor-trailer lost control on an icy U.S. 50 highway in Jackson County.
“She was a God-fearing woman. And I know in my heart that she is a sister in Christ now, and I look forward to saying ‘hello’ to her again,” LaFollette said. “I can’t express what a heartache it is to my family and to myself that she’s gone.”
The siblings, LaFollette said, were born and raised in Lee’s Summit. They’d frequent local hangouts, like Summit Lanes bowling alley, where the owners became like their grandparents. The spot continued to play an important role in Stone’s life. Most recently, she helped the business advertise on social media.
“Like so many others, we are heartbroken to share we’ve lost a longtime, beloved member of our Summit Lanes family,” the business posted on Facebook on Thursday.
LaFollette said he and his sister were taught from a young age, “If you go into a situation and you have negative thoughts and a negative mindset, your only perception of the world is going to be negative.
“Rachel took that to heart. She never had a frown or an angry look. She was a person that always had a smile on her face no matter what the day was, no matter what she was facing.”
That attitude strengthened Stone’s relationships throughout her life, her brother said, both in her work as an educator and as a wife and mother to her two children.
Stone student-taught in Lee’s Summit in 1997 and then began her career at the high school in 2000, Principal Kari Harrison said in a message to families.
“I had the opportunity to be on committees with Rachel and went through district training with Rachel. She was kind, welcoming, energetic, and unapologetic about her enthusiasm for reaching students,” said Marjie Bohning, president of the Lee’s Summit High School Parent Teacher Student Association.
“She was my daughters’ health teacher. She had a way of engaging students with her personal stories, which made them free to share theirs. She talked about making personal decisions wisely, warning that they had to live with the consequences.”
LaFollette said Stone was “always that shoulder for students to lean on,” and someone who would help them work through their problems.
“But when you were the top of her class, she always wanted you to do more because she saw that potential. So she always pushed a little bit. She would guide them to do whatever work was necessary to get the best out of her students,” he said.
Some might assume Stone was a natural-born teacher, but LaFollette said that after high school, when she decided she wanted to become an educator, she worked at it every day.
“She was always studying and always going that extra mile to try to get her work done and understand what she needed to learn about teaching,” he said.
LaFollette said that Stone’s husband, Scott, inspired her to delve into physical education and athletics, and helped her learn how to be a trainer. She helped coach the volleyball team, as well as the dance team for a period.
Tara Schroeder Yantis, dance coach at Saint Thomas Aquinas High School in Overland Park, said she still thinks of Stone when she thinks of the Lee’s Summit Tigerettes.
“There are countless athletes and students hurting tonight. Because that’s what happens when a person dedicates their life to education and coaching. Generations of young people influenced and made better. Wrapping arms around each of you, where ever you are,” Yantis said in a Facebook post Thursday. “And to Stone’s family. My God. She was so loved. Treasured. We are with you in every way we can be.”
But one of Stone’s most important roles, her friends said, was being a mother to her son and daughter.
“She was the rock,” LaFollette said. “Just being able to guide her kids through life almost seamlessly was an art form that she had down. But it took her a long time to get there, as with any parent.”
“God, family and friends. That’s the order she put things,” he said. “And school to her was more like family. When she was at school, that was her family. But when she was at home, school never interrupted family time.”
LaFollette said that plans for a memorial service have yet to be finalized.
This story was originally published February 17, 2023 at 3:44 PM.
