Sharon
Especially during her final 18 years, which the native of France spent in her adopted home in central Vermont, students at The Sharon Academy who weren’t even taking Tolbert’s French classes flocked to her work space between periods.
“We were the nerds,” 2015 graduate Kyle Shekinah-Roarke recalled during the academy’s celebration of Tolbert’s life on Feb. 10. “We were awkward and kind of terrible and kind of gay. … We would rush out of class, go into this other classroom, shut the door, make sure nobody else could come in. She let us be in her space so we could be as weird and loud as we wanted.
“Flo had a remarkable gift for making space.”
Her husband Jeff and their sons Cobalt and Titien never begrudged the space and time Flo made, neither when Shekinah-Roarke and other students stopped by the Tolbert house in Randolph to talk or just to flee from those who would scold or judge or neglect. Not even when fans from beyond the academy clamored for her smile and her ear and her voice and her laugh, as many did during her last public appearance, at a play in which Jeff portrayed a transgender man, nine days before she died of breast cancer on Feb. 5.
“Sharing her was a constant sense of people saying, ‘Where’s Flo?’ instead of ‘How are you, Jeff?” or ‘How are you, Cobalt?’ or ‘How are you, Titien?’ if they ran into you someplace without her,” Jeff Tolbert recalled last week, while scrolling through digital photos of his years with the woman who won him over with ‘Hello’ the day they met in Barcelona in 1990. “I certainly couldn’t be jealous, introvert that I was and am.
“She got energy from being around people.”
The vibe ran both ways: During the celebration of her life at the academy, Vermont author Howard Coffin recalled meeting Tolbert at Sweet Melissa’s in Montpelier, where her sons were performing with their roots band, Coquette. His wife had just died, he said, and “I needed joy,” which Flo proceeded to provide even after revealing “that she was dying” herself. It was uplifting, Coffin continued, that “these people who care so much about the world chose our Vermont to live in — the last, best place of what is left of this country.”
That’s just how central Vermont looked to the Tolberts in 2001, when they were pondering where in America to settle after several years in France and a brief stretch in San Francisco.
“One of the things that were important in choosing where to live — along with a university nearby, good schools, a mountain that I could ski on — was a strong sense of community,” Jeff Tolbert said. “The more time we spent here before we found our place, the more it seemed like a totally different America from what was starting to happen just about everywhere else we looked.”
Soon, Flo would find The Sharon Academy much more flexible than the bureaucracy-bound schools and universities she attended and worked at in France.
“The French live for hierarchy and following the rungs of the ladder,” Jeff Tolbert said. “Diplomas, certificates, licenses seem to count for more than capacity, intelligence and drive. She knew very well that, in France, she would never have been allowed to take on the roles and responsibilities she was encouraged, and happy, to take on here.”
So Flo’s colleagues and students noticed, almost from the start.
“She just blossomed,” head of school Michael Livingston said last week. “Her room was very small, but the space was a very safe place to explore the language, both for language learners and, amazingly, for the kids who piled in during lunch, during a break, after school, before class. Kids who were quirky or exploring who they were, a lot of the questioning kids … the ones who might have been bi- or trans-, kids who’d been bullied or harassed in other situations.
“She was a bedrock for so many students. And for adults, too.”
Just ask Amber Wylie, TSA’s director of development and enrollment, one of three colleagues whom Flo deputized during her final months to plan her memorial service at the school.
“At my first staff meeting nine years ago, what struck me was her compassion and her warmth,” Wylie said last week. “She could be direct and at the same time very warm. She could see the essence of something, and look past the superficial. I came here from the corporate world. Knowing that she was there and wouldn’t judge me if I was having a hard day was priceless.”
Colleagues and students began returning such favors almost as soon as Flo’s breast cancer, which was first diagnosed in 2001, then went into remission following initial treatments, re-emerged in 2011. Finally, in 2014 it started spreading elsewhere in her body.
“So many people stepped up in so many different ways,” Jeff Tolbert said. “It’s as though something was guiding us here, that we were meant to be here, that this safety net was waiting for us.”
Flo responded by sharing her journey rather than hiding it. Starting in November of 2014, she wrote regular posts on a blog, aproposdeflo.wordpress.com, that ran in the TSA newsletter.
“I am scared but hopeful that the side-effects will be manageable and the results positive,” she wrote in the first post. “I am trying to build moments of fun as often as possible and this is really keeping me sane.
“The best times are when I connect with people. Teaching is the prime example. There also are the visits of students — my ‘surrogate children’ — old friends, even visits by phone. Time with my support network — Jeff, the boys, close friends and colleagues … The daily phone calls with my mom.
“I cry a lot, but I laugh even more.”
She also started practicing mindfulness, the use of meditation and other means of focusing one’s attention on the present moment.
Soon she was sharing those principles with TSA colleagues and students.
“It became accessible to the kids in a whole new way,” Livingston said. “She was so thoughtful, and they knew it was real to her. … She did a tremendous amount of personal work to gain and then preserve that equanimity. She did a phenomenal amount of work to be present for everybody. When you’re an educator, you’re on all the time. To be battling something that’s going to take your life, that’s terribly uncomfortable, and to be able to come in and perform and remain available to people that way … it brings me to tears just talking about it.”
The tears mingled with cheers on the last day of school before Christmas-New Year’s break in 2016. After telling a full assembly that she needed to concentrate full time on her fight for life, she ran a gantlet of colleagues and students and parents down a hallway and out to Livingston’s truck for the ride home.
“People gave her an ovation as she walked out,” Livingston said. “I asked her to take her time. She didn’t stroll straight through it. She took probably 15 minutes, shaking hands, smiling at people, talking to people.”
At home, she continued to share her time and attention with others when she could, including one night when Kyle Shekinah-Roarke arrived in search of help processing some “awful things” that were happening in his life after graduation.
“I was met with this grounded presence that said, ‘I see you,’ ” Shekinah-Roarke recalled at the memorial service. ” ‘I hear you. I understand you. I’ve been there.
” ‘You will get through this.’ ”
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304. To suggest candidates for an A Life remembrance, email newseditor@vnews.com