Beth Lynch lived a life appreciating what most of us take for granted. In spite of lifelong, slowly debilitating health complications brought on by muscular dystrophy, what her friends and family remember most about her is that she “never complained.”
Lynch died May 6 after a 58-year battle against her disease. Her memorial service is scheduled June 4 at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church off Mount Vernon Parkway. Over 20 years, Lynch developed and taught an age-appropriate core curriculum for first- through fifth-graders there and was later asked to expand her involvement as Lower School Chaplain.
Her husband, Robert F. Lynch, remembers his wife always saying, “I have the greatest job in the whole world,” at Holy Innocents’.
On the Friday following her death, he received a text from one of the teachers. Even though she hadn’t been at the school for three years, the middle school students wrote the initials BL on their wrists because, the text said, “Mrs. Lynch was the pulse to their heart.”
Her sunny disposition was lifelong, remembered fondly by Debby Allen, Lynch’s childhood friend and classmate in a small Kansas City private school. There were times at school, Allen recalls, when Lynch would need to take a timeout to rest her legs — which had been wrapped up to prevent movement — in the nurse’s office. “Clearly not something that was fun for a young child to go through,” Allen said, “but we just talked, and laughed, and she rested, and then we got up and started again.”
The friends went separate ways after high school but Allen said they would touch base or run into each other through the years. And she felt “blessed” to reconnect with Lynch “in a big way” when her Lynch’s mother invited her to Lynch’s birthday party last May.
“She had to be forced physically by her body to stop doing what she loved to do. And until that point, she didn’t quit,” Allen said. “There aren’t words to really explain. None of us know somebody like this very often in our life. She’s the only person like that I’ve ever known.”
In 1997, Lynch was injured in an ATV accident so serious that Robert said, “If I showed you pictures you would agree that ten times out of ten, she would have died. Yet somehow she ended up with only a skinned elbow and a few bumps and bruises.”
Even from a wheelchair, she persevered. She told her husband she had a “guardian angel watching over her.” Robert hopes to establish a nonprofit, named “My Guardian Angel” on his wife’s behalf. “I want to try to build on the outpouring of love and support from so many who knew Beth.”
Her gratefulness was infectious. “She was really an inspiration to everybody because she was so positive,” said Kathy Bozeman, a colleague. “Even though we knew it took her longer to get where she was going, she still wanted to be involved and get out there.”
Co-workers said she loved to help with extracurriculars like school plays and “meals on wheels.” She had an ability to frame the theatrical productions in a way to help children understand the biblical messages behind them. “The plays she had the students perform in chapel also helped them remember the lessons she was teaching,” Bozeman said, adding, “Her husband, Bob, would cut and paint set props.”
She had students learn a few songs to sing as they delivered meals to senior citizens’ doors. “She never sought recognition, she never would toot her own horn,” her husband said. “But everybody else saw it. She just had this magnetism about her.”
Her students remembered “the shoes of empathy and the hat of compassion.” She brought a ‘huge’ pair of shoes they all put on and talked about what it means to ‘walk in another’s shoes’,” Bozeman said. The shoes and hat belonged to Robert, 6-foot-4.
Besides her husband, Lynch is survived by her son, Jarret Lynch, her brother C. Wells Haren, III, and her sister Nan Hughes. Donations in lieu of flowers may be made to The Beth Lynch Memorial Fund in care of Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church. The funds will be distributed among her favorite service groups for children, and to establish a garden in her honor.
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