Sharon Hunt, teacher for a quarter century, dies at 65

Sharon Hunt always knew she wanted to be a teacher. She solidified that notion while attending high school and, once she graduated, was totally smitten after substitute teaching in Georgia, where she was able to do so without a college degree.

Finally, once her children were old enough that she didn’t need to care for them full time, Hunt resumed her schooling. She earned two degrees in education, a bachelor’s at Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights and a master’s at Wright State University in Ohio.

She taught elementary school for a nearly a quarter century and since 1999 instructed fifth graders in the Reading Community School District northeast of Cincinnati until she retired when the school year ended earlier this year.

She had undergone surgery for knee replacement a week before becoming ill with the coronavirus, which some believe she may have caught from a physical therapist who later called in sick. Hunt was hooked up to a ventilator for two weeks, then was told she also had pneumonia.

She died Sept. 25 in a hospital in Montgomery, Ohio, before she could spend her first retirement check. Kristina, her daughter-inlaw, confirmed that the cause was complications of COVID-19. She was 65.

“You see it on TV, but until it actually happens to somebody you love, it’s not really a reality,” Kristina Hunt said in an interview with Fox19. “We’ve watched it destroy and turn our family upside down in a matter of days.”

While her mother-in-law was ailing, Katrina created a Facebook page called “Sharon Strong.”

“She fought the hardest fight we could’ve ever asked for,” she wrote on Facebook. “‘Sharon Strong’ is, and will always be, the perfect saying for our Sharon.”

Officials from the Reading Community School District echoed the family’s sentiments. “Sharon was one of those teachers whose students came back to visit because they knew how much she cared and wanted to share with her in person what a difference she had made in their lives,” the district said in a statement.

“If a child was hungry, she shared her lunch,” said Beth Wernery, the school board president.