Turns out the educator taught only until she couldn't control the chalk anymore.

As she began suffering the early stages of Alzheimer's disease late last year, she said, she knew it was time to ring the bell on her 35-year teaching career.

"I knew something was wrong in December, but I was afraid to tell anybody," Gattis said. "I always told myself I'd never stay in the classroom when I wasn't at my best. I would never do anything to endanger a child's education."

What was the first sign that she might be doing that? I asked.

"I would be writing on the blackboard and notice the words were misspelled. Tom [her boyfriend] had to help me write the reports for the parents. I couldn't even check the freakin' boxes. I had to admit to myself that something was wrong."

She retired a month later from her second-grade class at Quest Academy Charter School in North Raleigh.

Gattis called me recently because, she said, she wanted to let others suffering from her condition know what was ahead and how to prepare.

"It should be an open thing," she said of an illness that has, among other things, caused her to get lost in the middle of her home.

"I've been very blessed, and I want to be able to tell the truth to people who are just getting Alzheimer's," she said. "I feel so sorry for the people" who lack her support system -- "children, stepchildren, grandchildren."

Her doctor, she said, "told me what was going to happen. I'm at a good place now, but it's really hard on the people around you. They have to find a fine line between being compassionate and being too sappy. Sympathy does not work."

She said she's distressed that some people "have let Alzheimer's win. That's what I absolutely refuse to do."

I've known Gattis, 61, for about 12 years. I interviewed her after her late husband, Bill, succumbed to a very rare and ultimately fatal brain-degenerating illness -- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease -- and, much more happily, when she was trying to reprise an earlier stage appearance with Barry Manilow when he was scheduled to appear here in January.

We've talked as friends about myriad things, especially her love of Duke University's men's basketball team and my disdain for same.

Gattis has always been upbeat, seeking and finding humor in the bleakest situations. "At least I know where all of the free snacks are at all of the hospitals" at which she's sought treatment, she said during the hour I spent with her and her caretaker, Alberta Hence, in the den of her Raleigh townhouse.

As we made our way to the door, she said, "It's been hell losing my mind. I don't mind having the disease. I hate what it has done to me. If I had cancer or leukemia, I could still teach. ... As a little girl, I would line up my dolls and teach to them. I was never going to give up teaching. It's what I am, what I was born to do."

What, I asked, does she miss most?

"Losing me is what I miss most," she said. "I had so much fun. ... I miss my life. There is no me anymore."

There is, of course, still her. Because of her frankness in talking about her illness, maybe she can help others be themselves longer, too.

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.