As kindergarten teacher at the same school for 25 years, Rose Luebbert made a lot of memories.
Her “kids” will never forget the runaway gingerbread man and how they searched for him in every nook and cranny of the school. (It was a fun exercise Luebbert created to give little ones a comfortable taste of big, new surroundings.)
Even as adults, former students recall “Mr. T'' with the tall teeth and other “letter people” that Luebbert used to teach alphabet sounds.
It was Luebbert's compassionate touch and her keen sense of knowing what makes a young mind click that left such an impression on St. Cecilia School, said Principal Paulette Rourke.
“A kindergarten teacher is always extra special,” Rourke said. “They teach you what school and learning is all about. Rose was an outstanding example of what a kindergarten teacher is.”
Luebbert on Tuesday lost a yearlong fight with a rare cancer that started in the appendix. She was 49.
A funeral Mass is set for 1 p.m. Saturday at St. Cecilia Cathedral, 701 N. 40th St.
During her career at the Catholic grade school, Luebbert taught more than 1,000 children, Rourke said. She'd been there so long she taught children of former students.
Husband Bob Luebbert, an attorney, said his wife was always quick to hug a student. She loved gardening, he said, and she was like a flower in sunshine.
“Whenever she was around people she blossomed and had a different energy about her,” he said.
Luebbert, a mother of three, passed her students to longtime first-grade teacher Margaret Swanson, who happened to be her mentor when Luebbert was a student teacher.
“Rose's students were always so well-prepared and eager,” said Swanson. “She loved them so passionately.”
Swanson's own children had Luebbert for kindergarten, and each still remembers the dance she taught them for their annual songfest.
While Luebbert battled her illness, she still helped out in the kindergarten classroom. She showed last year's class how to put on happy feet for the penguin dance they performed at the songfest.
This week, older students jotted down memories of Luebbert that included the Mickey Mouse march and, of course, the gingerbread man.
One of the first things each kindergarten class did was read the story of the gingerbread man and then bake the gingerbread man cookie that somehow escaped. The kids would spend the week hunting for it.
In doing so, they'd meet teachers and older students who all knew the game and joined in with antics like springing out of a closet where the cookie man was said to be hiding.
Now an eighth-grader, Maureen Bigsby recalled “crying my eyes out” at kindergarten roundup. Nobody could calm her — until Luebbert picked her up.
“I immediately stopped crying,” Maureen said. “I remember just about everything in kindergarten. It was one of my favorite years.”
Besides her husband, Luebbert's survivors include her children, Elizabeth Hoffman, Ryan Luebbert and Marie Luebbert, all of Omaha; mother, Gladys H. Gillogly of Omaha; and sister Diane Diederich of Omaha.
Contact the writer:
444-1224, cindy.gonzalez@owh.com
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