Eliza Fletcher got her first job teaching school because Principal Kiasi Malone saw an unmistakable earnestness in her.

“It was her countenance, like a ray of sunshine,” Malone said. “I felt like she was the type of person who may not initially have the skill, but she definitely had the will. She wanted to be a great teacher.”

On Tuesday, Sept. 6, Malone spent much of her energy comforting teachers and staff who used to work with Fletcher, from 2012-2015, at Promise Academy on Hollywood Street in North Memphis. Fletcher was hired first as a special education assistant. In her second year, she was teaching kindergarten.

Here’s what we know about Eliza Fletcher

“She had a kind spirit. She was always happy, always bubbly. I don’t ever remember her being unhappy,” Malone said. “She was very warm, very giving.”

The children loved her, Malone said. 

“Even with her children that were challenging, we never heard her complain about them. She just always tried to figure out a different way.” 

Across the city Tuesday, people remembered Eliza Fletcher as someone who was such a natural in the classroom that their children couldn’t wait to see her every morning. Fletcher was reported missing Friday, Sept. 2, in a violent abduction; remains found on Labor Day were identified as hers on Sept. 6. 

Rekeshia Hudson was a room mother in 2015, Fletcher’s first year as a teacher in the prekindergarten wing at St. Mary’s Episcopal School in East Memphis.

Locals react to Fletcher case with sympathy, calls for justice

“My question is, why did this happen to such a sweet and meek, loving, warm mother who did what she was supposed to do in terms of her family and her students and just set a great example?” Hudson asked.

“She set such a great example,” said Hudson, heartbroken that someone who meant so much to the community could so quickly be gone.

“Liza had a very calming demeanor,” Hudson said. “She was an angel, honestly, with a peaceful, peaceful spirit.”

Fletcher taught pre-K at St. Mary’s for seven years. 

St. Mary’s canceled school Tuesday for pre-K through 5th grade, closing the building where Fletcher often was seen on the curb doing car-pool duty, hugging children who were her students and those she’d taught over the years.

Everything you need to know about ‘Let’s Finish Liza’s Run’

Classes for the middle and upper school began late at 10 a.m. with chapel. Faculty and staff started the day earlier in a private chapel, lighting candles to remember Fletcher, a “bright star in our community,” according to the school Facebook page: “Liza embodied the song that we sing every week in Early Childhood chapel, ‘This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.’”

Some of the city’s larger faith communities are also mourning her loss. 

Fletcher grew up at Calvary Episcopal Church, graduated from Hutchison School, and got married at and attended Second Presbyterian Church with her husband and two sons. She was the daughter of parents with deep, generational ties to the city.

Fletcher’s family issued a statement Tuesday, thanking people for their prayers and law enforcement for their quick action but asked to be left to grieve in private.

“Liza grew up sitting with her mother and her grandfather right across the aisle from us at Calvary,” said Rev. Hester Mathes, priest at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in South Memphis.

Calkins: Friday morning, a throng of women in Memphis will ‘finish Liza’s run.’

“So, I just thought of all the families, multi-generational families, who are trying to raise the next generation to live in faith. You just start thinking about what is a faithful response to all of this?

“How do we care for each other? How do we, like Liza, let our light shine, instead of giving into the darkness and the fear and the grief but allow all those things to live inside of us?”

Peggy McClure graduated from Hutchison the same year Fletcher’s mother, Adele Orgill Wellford, graduated from St. Mary’s.

Both attended Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia, for two years before transferring back to Memphis.

Emails and texts between the Hollins, St. Mary’s and Hutchison alumnae were full of prayers all weekend, McClure said, from places across the nation where the friends now live.

Bond revoked for suspect in Eliza Fletcher slaying

“We were all grieving together. We’ve been grieving together since Friday,” McClure said. 

Both McClure and Fletcher’s mother came from families of four daughters.

“We always laughed about being from sorority houses and how special our dads were,” McClure said.

Fletcher’s father is Beasley Wellford, son of former U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Judge Harry Wellford.

“Even if you didn’t know her personally, you feel like you’re connected in some way because this is a family with long ties, and many of them have stayed in Memphis. A lot of us are one or two degrees of separation. I think that’s why it affects the whole city in a way that’s palpable right now,” Mathes said.

Fletcher slaying appears to have been random, isolated incident, Mulroy says

“I’ve read everywhere, Liza was just one of those girls that when she walked in the room, her smile was so bright, she made everybody feel courageous,” McClure said.

This summer, St. Mary’s longtime math teacher Shannon Bettis also died. For many families, including Hudson’s, the second loss feels like a deep abyss.

Hudson explained Fletcher’s death to her older daughter, 11, but she has not told her first-grader, age 7.

“It’s enough for me to handle so, I imagine a 7-year-old having to put her head on the pillow at night and wrapping her mind around the fact that her teacher, who she saw whenever she was in the building, is no longer with us.

Target kidnapping suspect charged

“I thought about sharing it with them and just limiting the details, but my daughter is very inquisitive. She would have asked about the details. ... I just feel for now, it is best for me not to share that. I am just wanting to protect her.”

At Promise Academy on Tuesday, staff remembered the good times with Fletcher, including that she wore Frye boots, which tended to add an intentional bearing to her step.

“You could just hear her footsteps because she walked heavy. It was like, ‘OK, there’s Eliza’ because you could hear her coming down the hallway,” Malone said. “It’s been very difficult since Friday, but it was just really hard yesterday.”

Due to the nature of this story, the comments are turned off.