Honoring teacher

Money raised for slain educator Scott Beigel.

During that terrible February afternoon at Stoneman Douglas, as students tried to escape the killing field of the third floor hallways, geography teacher Scott Beigel unlocked his classroom door and ushered them in.

His heroism left him exposed to the shooter and cost him his life. On Tuesday, The Polo Club community in Boca Raton honored his memory by presenting a check for $26,092 to his mother, who flew in from Long Island for the occasion.

The money will pay to send underprivileged children to summer camp, a cause that would have pleased Beigel, who loved kids, loved his time at camp, and had been deeply moved by his experience as a volunteer teacher for poor children in South Africa.

“We wanted the money to go to something that would make our hearts feel good, where we knew it would accomplish something,” said Carol Horn, a resident of The Polo Club, who led the fundraising campaign.

Scott J. Beigel Memorial Fund will start paying for summer camp in 2019, after its leaders have time to research camps and establish the best way for the fund to operate. During a brief event Tuesday morning at The Polo Club’s clubhouse, Horn and other residents presented the check to his mother, Linda Beigel Schulman, who said, “I don’t have the words to thank you.”

She said she wasn’t surprised to learn her son had risked his life to save students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, saying she would have expected nothing less from him.

“He could have stayed in his classroom with the door locked because that’s protocol,” she said. “But what he did in Parkland was not surprising. I would be shocked if he didn’t go out into that hall to save his kids. I would be shocked and absolutely disappointed in my son. I would like him to save his students and still be here. But he did the right thing. He’s a teacher, and those are his kids.”

Hoping to honor his memory the best way possible, she said, the money will go toward making kids’ lives better.

“I want the children to have the best summer of their lives,” Schulman said. “I want to take them out of their environment and put them in a wonderful place where they could enjoy their summers, whether it’s a day camp for a younger child, where they could have fresh air and happiness during the day, or a child that I can send to sleepaway camp and just get away and just be themselves.”

Horn said it wasn’t difficult persuading people in the community to donate, saying they had all been “shocked and saddened by the Parkland tragedy.”

“When people were coming to contribute money, we had parents and grandparents with children and grandchildren in the school, children who hid under desks or in closets,” she said. “This touched all of us and we have to all help make a change.”