“She wanted to live life to the fullest every day,” Szul said. “If there was an opportunity to do something, she was right on it. She didn’t want to miss out on anything.”
It wasn’t until she got on a lung transplant list nearly two years ago that Jill Szul started to tell people about her condition, which might otherwise have been mistaken for asthma by most, save her closest friends.
While many people with CF die in their teens and 20s, she lived into her 40s. She was a “shining light” of the Cystic Fibrosis program at University Hospital where she was a patient for more than 30 years, Szul said.
Ultimately, it wasn’t the disease that killed her, but an unexpected pulmonary rupture of an artery in her weakened lungs.
Jill, a Fairfield High School alumna from 1982, had been a teacher in the Lakota Local School District since 1986.
“She was susceptible to some allergens and colds, but being a teacher and loving her job, she just kind of dealt with it,” he said. “If you’re going to worry about those kinds of things, you’re not going to be able to do your job effectively.”
Jill Szul wanted to be a teacher from an early age. Mike Szul said she used to corral the neighborhood children in her basement to play school, and she was always the teacher.
The Szuls met in 1989 as neighbors in an apartment complex in Fairfield. They later moved to West Chester Twp. where they raised their son Connor, a sixth-grader at Heritage Elementary School.
“I think she really had a desire to serve and have a call to duty,” Szul said. “She was just meant to be a teacher. She was born to teach.”
Jill Szul joined the Lakota Local School District right after college, and decided that was where she would stay, initially as a second- and third-grade teacher and most recently as a reading specialist.
“It’s the first time in my career that I’ve been involved with the death of a staff member,” Cherokee Elementary School Principal Jennifer Forren said. “Losing a staff member is devastating, because I really feel like at Cherokee we are like a family.”
Longtime friend Sheila Grammer said Szul, her mentor and “dream” teaching partner, was passionate about the profession.
“She’s just affected people over time,” she said. “She’s been here a long time and people have great memories of her.”
Not only has it impacted current students and staff members, but also former students
Educator Jessica Wheeler said Szul was a member of her Cherokee family, but also her third-grade teacher.
“I was a struggling learner, and she went out of her way to make sure I wasn’t,” Wheeler said. “Many young students admire their teachers. As a third-grader, I looked up to Mrs. Szul. As an adult, and knowing the true person she was, that admiration didn’t stop.”
When close to 1,000 people came to the visitation Szul said he felt the impact his wife had on the community.
“It was just kind of shocking to us that we had that kind of support and she’d touched so many lives,” he said. “It hasn’t quite sunk in.”
Many of those people, he said, have wanted to give to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
On May 21, Cherokee staff and students have planned to walk in a charity walk benefitting the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and instead of raising money in a walk this spring for technology for the school, the annual fundraiser also will go toward the foundation. In addition, staff members have formed two teams to run in the Flying Pig marathon in Szul’s memory.
“The whole school is rallying right now, and this is how they are being active in their grieving,” said Ali Bethel, executive director of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Greater Cincinnati Chapter. “It sounds almost like a movement ... they can do something positive with an unfortunate situation.”
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