Arlington teacher delighted in being with kids

Published 10:25 pm Saturday, April 12, 2008

Tom Ingalls didn’t stop being a kindergarten teacher when school let out for the day.

Heather Brown, whose two children were in Ingalls’ kindergarten classes in the Arlington School District, remembers her daughter’s T-ball season.

“You’d give him a schedule for sporting events, not expecting him to be there. He’d just show up. He did that for a lot of kids,” Brown said.

Victoria Brown is in seventh grade now, and her brother Thomas is a third-grader. Their mother will never forget her children’s first teacher. “He went the extra mile. He really cared,” Brown said.

Thomas Ingalls died April 3 in Bellingham, where he lived with his wife, Jodi Tranter-Ingalls. Since 2006, he had battled anaplastic thyroid cancer, a rare form of thyroid disease. He was 54.

Teaching was a second career for Ingalls, who was born June 27, 1953, in Portland, Ore. He taught 15 years in Arlington schools after working as a systems analyst for a telephone company.

Following graduation from Western Washington University in 1993, Ingalls taught sixth grade for a year at Eagle Creek Elementary. He then taught kindergarten at Eagle Creek and Kent Prairie elementary schools before Pioneer Elementary opened in 2002. He’d been at Pioneer since its opening, and was able to teach this school year until December.

“Kindergarten is a huge challenge, but he loved it,” said Tranter-Ingalls. “He was kind of a big kid. He wanted to do something that makes a difference.”

Ingalls is survived by his mother, Norma Ingalls Brenek, and his brother, David Ingalls, both of Seattle. He is also survived by his stepdaughter, Amber Kalsbeek, and her husband, Luke Kalsbeek, and grandchildren Alyssa and Cameron Kalsbeek of Bellingham. He was preceded in death by his father, Albert Ingalls.

“Tom was in every sense a dad and grandpa. His nickname was Papa Bear,” his widow said.

“He absolutely became part of the family,” said Amber Kalsbeek, 29, who remembers meeting Ingalls on her 21st birthday. Her mother and stepfather were married for five years.

Kalsbeek said Ingalls helped take her children to swimming lessons in the summer and always stayed to watch, even as his illness progressed. “My other big memory, at Christmas he always played Santa,” she said. “He had the beard and everything.”

Tranter-Ingalls said her husband delighted in his work.

“He brought home stories about the kids. Always at the beginning of the year, he’d do a lot of word play and rhyming. He made everything you can imagine out of toilet paper rolls, paper towel rolls, whatever,” she said.

For Mother’s Day, his class celebrated “Mothers and Others,” and for Father’s Day it was “Dads and Lads.”

As a teacher, she said, “he had wonderful patience. He was firm but loving, and also fun-loving.”

Pioneer Elementary has a wetlands area, and Ingalls was instrumental in planning a science garden. “They have it started,” said Tranter-Ingalls, who works in landscape architecture. The garden is planned with pod areas that will allow for many classes to be there at once. “It was a project very dear to his heart. We’re hoping when it’s completed to have a plaque out there for Tom,” she said.

Her husband loved all kinds of music. He jogged, lifted weights and played basketball with friends. They met at a music club in Bellingham. “He asked a whole table of girls to dance with him,” she said.

Pioneer Elementary School Principal Karl Olson remembers a special teacher who was close to the community even though he lived in Bellingham. “He really tried to make those connections with families. He attended almost every PTSA meeting, every family fun night, evening events. He felt the whole community was part of his family,” Olson said. “He had the energy, and also got energy from the kids.”

Olson said the school is accepting donations in Ingalls’ name to help build the science garden. “He cared about environmental education and wanted to get students out there appreciating nature,” the principal said.

Brown remembers Ingalls coming to Arlington to see students in a Fourth of July kiddie parade. “That parade is probably five minutes long, if that. He came and talked to the kids and told them how cute they looked,” she said. “He left a mark on our life.”

Reporter Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.