Cancer Claims Teacher Who Inspired Many Sonja Roach Left Legacy Of Fitness, Fun At Lewis And Clark High School
Some will remember Sonja Roach bundled in scarves, pacing the sidelines at Lewis and Clark High School football games.
Others may recall the years she sponsored the Ti-Girls, a popular ‘70s drill team some say she ran like an Army squad.
For still others, her name brings to mind annual Super Bowl parties at her South Hill home, where friends lined up for homemade chili.
Nearly everyone who attended Lewis and Clark in the past 37 years has memories of Roach, who taught, coached and, most recently, headed the physical education department.
Roach died Monday of cancer. She was 59.
Ellen Nelson, a close friend and co-worker, remembers the day Roach called and told her about the disease, about how she was going to stay with her brother, Dick, in California for a while.
“It just threw me for a loop,” said Nelson. “I couldn’t believe it.”
She couldn’t fathom cancer striking the woman who almost never took sick days and stressed lifelong fitness to generations of children.
Suddenly, Roach swapped Friday night rummy games and weekends at her Lake Pend Oreille cabin for surgery and chemotherapy in California. She no longer joined the “lunch bunch” in the school cafeteria.
But Roach kept in touch, and when she returned in July for a visit to the lake, she made plans for a trip to Alaska with relatives. She talked to friends about education reform and about how she’d like to work for a travel agency.
“She had a lot more plans, too,” said Jane Roach, her sister-in-law. “I think if she lived another two lifetimes, she’d never get them all in.”
Sonja Roach’s visit was cut short when she fell ill and returned to California to find that the cancer had spread, friends said.
John Hook, a Lewis and Clark physical education teacher, said she died at a favorite time of year. “She loved the opening of school. And she died at night, between the end of Labor Day and the first day of school.”
Friends and relatives will attend a funeral mass at 10 a.m. today at The Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes.
They’ve spent part of the first week of school flipping through piles of pictures of the smiling woman with short, graying hair, and retelling favorite stories.
They remember her shivering in several layers of clothing each fall, jotting statistics for football coaches. They remember her giving her dog rides on her Honda 125 motorcycle, and roaring across Lake Pend Oreille on a Jet-Ski.
Current and former students say her class was the one where they wouldn’t goof off.
“She didn’t take any crap,” said Annie Vigus, a 17-year-old senior who helps in the school office. “You screw around and she’ll nail you for it.”
“She’s the epitome of what a coach and teacher should be,” said Bob Lobdell, a colleague for 28 years. “She could be as tough or as gentle as she needed to be.”
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