Family recalls teacher Grace

By Jane DeGeorge
Eagle Reporter


Published: June 26, 2008

Doctors didn’t mince words when Kathy Stein was expecting her first child more than 30 years ago. They told the former Madison County resident that her health problems made a successful delivery impossible.

“I was told (the baby and I) would die,” Stein told The Eagle recently.

But she stuck with the pregnancy and nine months later, on Nov. 3, 1975, Stein gave birth to a baby girl. Weighing just five pounds, five ounces she felt as though her daughter was a “miracle baby.”

Leading up to the birth, Stein, now a Culpeper County resident, was having a hard time deciding on a name. Finally, she started looking through the encyclopedia and found the name “Amity,” which means “friendship” and “peaceful harmony.”

“I showed it to my husband (John Stein) and he said, ‘That’s it,’” she recalled.

In April 2007, Amity Stein tacked another name onto her signature when she wed Culpeper resident Aaron Grace, now 31. The name “Amity Grace” was “such a perfect name,” according to Stein.

“I think it was God given. It turned out to be a perfect name for her,” she said.

Just seven months later, on Nov. 11, 2007, Amity and Aaron Grace were on their way home from a Christmas shopping trip in Fredericksburg when their 2000 Chevy Blazer was struck by a 1999 Dodge Dakota pickup, killing Amity. Aaron Grace, who was hospitalized for four days following the accident, was treated for a broken rib and a partially collapsed lung, according to Stein.

The Dodge Dakota that was operated by Michael William Kilby, 60, of Lignum, was eastbound on Route 3 in Stevensburg when it crossed the centerline and struck the left front corner of the Chevy Blazer, according to Virginia State Police. Kilby, who was not injured, was charged with driving under the influence and involuntary manslaughter, according to Sgt. Les Tyler of the state police.

The Lignum resident pleaded guilty in February for his role in the Nov. 11, 2007 crash and in May, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Kathy Stein would not comment on the case or the sentence as a Culpeper County Circuit Court judge recently granted Kilby’s request to enter an appeal.

A date has not yet been set for this appeal hearing.

MPS teacher missed

The loss of Grace hit hard for both family members, friends and the many students who were personally touched by the former Madison Primary School second-grade teacher.

“There is no way you can measure how much we miss her,” Stein said of her daughter.

“She was our future, our hopes and our dreams,” added Stein’s mother and Grace’s grandmother, Ann Clore Frazier, whom Grace called “Mimi.”

In January 2000, Grace joined the staff at MPS, replacing a teacher who had decided to resign following a maternity leave. She taught first grade up until the fall of 2007, when she was bumped up to second grade.

Before Grace had first set foot inside a classroom as a child, she knew she wanted to be a teacher, according to her mother. When she was a young girl, she would “teach” family members and stuffed animals using a small blackboard and some chalk.

“Amity had a passion for children, she really enjoyed sparking their little minds,” Stein said.

The former MPS teacher chose to teach in Madison County for the small classroom size and because “parents are really active in their children’s lives and their schools,” here, Stein explained.

“Madison gave her a chance to know [the students’] parents and the kids,” she said.

In the classroom, Grace used inventive teaching techniques to educate her students, MPS Principal Jamie Mathieson told Stein following her daughter’s death.

One day, the primary school principal says he peeked into Grace’s classroom and saw all of her students laid out on beach towels on the floor. The students had their eyes closed while Grace told a story about the beach.

Mathieson decided to join the fun lying down alongside the students. As Grace read a line in a book that said “Here comes the wave,” the principal felt a mist go by. Startled, he opened his eyes to see that she was spraying a water bottle around the room to help illustrate the story.

“I never knew things like that,” Stein said of the story. Parents and other family members of Grace’s former students have also contacted Stein to share stories.

“It’s actually healing to hear from them because you see how many lives she did touch,” she said.

Reunion sparks relationship

When Grace was a child, she was very active and somewhat of a troublemaker, according to her mother and grandmother.
“She was hard to keep up with when she was little, she was quick,” Frazier said.

While Stein was taking nursing school classes when Grace was in kindergarten, Stein’s father would help out by watching her after school. One day, Stein was surprised to come home and hear that her daughter – who rarely sat still – had spent the entire afternoon quietly in her room.

Suspecting Grace had likely gotten into trouble, she headed up to her young daughter’s room and braced herself for the worst.

“She had crayoned all of the walls including in the closet,” Stein said laughing. “We couldn’t get off all of the crayon so ended up wall-papering.”

Growing up, the family enjoyed celebrating Christmas, spending weeks decorating a large nine-foot tall artificial Christmas tree each year.

After graduating from Radford University in Radford in December 1999, Grace moved back home to live with her parents in Culpeper commuting to Madison for work. Stein and her daughter would spend lots of time together scrap booking and making jewelry.

“We were just like best buddies. Our relationship really became a girlfriend relationship not just mother and daughter. We thought alike, we dressed alike…we just enjoyed being together,” she said.

After a few years, Stein’s grandmotherly instinct kicked in and she decided to broach the topic with Grace. 

“I was getting worried because I was getting older and older and I had to quit working because of my health,” Stein recalled. “I said to her, ‘You know I’m not going to be here forever and I’d love to have some grand babies before I go.’”

When Grace received a notice about her 10-year Culpeper County High School reunion, it was her mother who convinced her to attend.

“I told her ‘You don’t know who you might meet. Just go to the reunion and come home if you don’t like it,’” Stein said. It was at the Class of 1995 reunion where Grace bumped into Aaron Grace, whom she had been friends with in high school. 

“[In high school,] he had asked her out but she was dating another guy so she said no,” Stein said of Aaron Grace, who, at the time of the reunion, had recently divorced his first wife and was raising a son by himself.

After rekindling their friendship, the two e-mailed back and forth a few times before meeting in person for a date.

“Once they started dating, that was it,” Stein said.

Not long after they started dating, Aaron Grace proposed to Amity on the back porch of his apartment. They were married April 7, 2007 at Culpeper Free Methodist Church kissing throughout the entire day, according to Amity’s grandmother.

“I’ve never seen love like that between two people,” Frazier said. “It was unreal, you could just see it coming out of their eyes.”

Moving on

Following his wife’s death, Aaron Grace kept her belongings untouched, according to Stein, who just recently started sorting through her daughter’s things.
“Aaron’s kept everything as she put it, even her toothbrush,” Frazier said.

While looking through some of Grace’s papers in a desk drawer, Stein uncovered a list of girl’s baby names that Aaron hadn’t known were there.
“There was about a dozen names and all of them started with ‘A’,” she said.

The Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays following Grace’s death were especially hard for those who survived the 32-year-old. Grace had planned to host Thanksgiving using the full set of china her and her husband had received as a wedding present earlier that year. The set was never used, Stein said.
Although Grace passed away before Christmas, some of her family members still received holiday presents that she had purchased almost two months in advance.

“She had made us all jewelry and got some things from L.L. Bean,” Stein said. “It was a little unusual for her to shop that early. You wonder if she didn’t think if something was going to happen.”
S
ince 1982, the Steins have vacationed at the beach in Nags Head, N.C. every summer. This will be the first year they will go without their daughter.
“We feel like she would want us to go, so we’re going,” Stein said.

Amity Stein Grace is buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery on North Main Street just north of downtown Madison. 

(MG News Service writers Katie Dolac and Nate Delesline III contributed to this story.)