Just for Brittney… Eggers work of love done in memory of daughter
Published 12:30 am Saturday, November 9, 2019
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Photo Contributed Kim and Sharon Eggers work to secure balloons in place to welcome students back for a new school year.
Photo Contributed Kim and Sharon Eggers sit in front of their newly completed design welcoming students back to Harold McCormick for a new school year.
BY IVAN SANDERS
STAR STAFF
ivan.sanders@elizabethton.com
Everyone that knew Brittney Eggers knew her love for children. After graduating from ETSU with a degree in radiology, Brittney came to work with her mother, Sharon, at Harold McCormick Elementary as a teacher’s assistant.
She soon discovered that working with children was the calling God had on her life and was preparing to go back to school to get her education degree but then things changed drastically.
Brittney was diagnosed with cancer and at the age of 24 passed from this life.
But Brittney didn’t leave without impacting the lives of those children that she had interacted with and her parents decided to do something to always let the children know that she may not be with them in body but her spirit was still there with them.
So, one year after her passing Sharon and Kim Eggers started decorating the area around the school sign with various decorations based on the season as well as placing a stone with a photo of Brittney for the children to remember her by.
“We wanted to do something for the kids so we started decorating every holiday for the kids to see,” Sharon said. “We have parents that contact us to say thank you and the kids can’t wait to see what’s next.
“Brittney has to be smiling down on us. We have kids come running to see what we are coming up with next. There’s a kid across the street that will come out on his porch and watch as we put something different up.”
The children that Brittney first started with are in sixth grade now and are still impacted by her memory.
“There was a girl that was in her first Kindergarten class that is now in junior high that came by a month ago and told us how much that she missed Miss Brittney,” said Sharon. “She was in tears as she said that she missed her so much and that she hoped to make her proud.
“That makes us feel really good. We also get cards from parents to let us know they are praying for us which we still need.”
Brittney had a special place that she loved to go and that place was the ocean. People soon found out about her love for the ocean and it has been a tradition since the stone was placed that people would come by and leave things as a remembrance of her life.
“People will leave things on her stone,” her father Kim said. “Seashells, stones – it has become a tradition with a lot of people to let us know someone was there.
“A part of her is there and parents will bring kids to have pictures made around the garden area. People also bring balloons and leave on her birthday which makes us feel good.”
Another side of doing their work of love is the people that come by to share their special stories of their daughter.
“We have people tell us Brittney stories about how she touched them and helped them,” Sharon said. “She was not one to brag about herself and did what she was supposed to do.
“We had a fear that she was going to be forgotten and we didn’t want them to. She was our baby and we just wanted to keep her memory going.”
The Eggers said they get their inspirations for their decorations from various things including just being out running around to something they see on the internet.
“It’s all about making kids, especially the Kindergarten age, smile. We try to keep things fresh,” stated Kim.
Everything that the Eggers do come straight from their pockets as far as purchasing the decorations and they take time out of their schedule to also put up and change out the decorations themselves.
It’s their commitment to forever keeping Brittney’s memories alive in the hearts of the kids.
