A new Hilton Head memorial honors kindergarten teacher killed in SC alligator attack

A new memorial on Hilton Head Island honors a beloved kindergarten teacher who lost her life in a tragic accident last summer.

Cassandra Cline, 45, was killed by an alligator Aug. 20 while walking her dog near her home in Sea Pines off Governors Lane.

According to state officials, the alligator tried to attack Cline’s dog when she intervened and was pulled into a nearby lagoon. The dog survived and was cared for by a neighbor in the immediate aftermath of the incident.

Now, near the spot of the tragedy, a plaque and a tree with pink blooms stand in remembrance of Cline, who taught kindergarten for 16 years in New York state.

“People have been leaving flowers there for months” Steve Darmody, who lives off Governors Lane, said Tuesday morning.

“A bunch of neighbors on the street got together and bought a tree with pink flowers,” Darmody said, saying that pink was Cline’s favorite color.

The tree and the plaque went up in the last couple of weeks, he said.

“In Loving Memory of Cassandra ‘Sassie’ Cline,” reads the plaque, which features an excerpt from Robert Fulghum’s book, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”

“The essays that make up (the book) had their innocuous origins as biweekly columns, mostly written between 1960 and 1984, for a small Unitarian church newsletter,” the New York Times reported in 1989.

The lessons contained in the book, and quoted on the plaque, include: “Share everything. Play fair. ... Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody,” among others.

Cline and her husband had recently moved to Sea Pines, but she was scheduled to start her 17th year in New York’s Union-Endicott Central School District in September.

District spokesperson Linda Myers said Cline’s husband, James, has established a scholarship in her name: The Casi Cline Memorial Scholarship. (Friends and colleagues also call her “Casi.”)

That scholarship will first be awarded in June, Myers said, to a graduating Union-Endicott High School senior.

Darmody said some in the Sea Pines community have already made donations to the scholarship.

Myers said “a very generous” amount has already been donated, and that the “scholarship will continue over the years” in the district.

Some of the specifics are still being ironed out, she said, but recipients will be students “who honor her beliefs, personality and vibrance.”

Myers said people can donate to the scholarship by visiting the district’s website at www.uek12.org/ScholarshipsUE.aspx.

Donations can be made via the PayPal button at the top-right corner of the page, and donors can specify the name of the scholarship.

Or, people can send a check to:

Scholarship Opportunities for U-E Tigers

P.O. Box 7111

Endicott, NY 13761-7111

Cline touched the lives of more than 400 students and their families during her time in the district, superintendent Dr. Suzanne McLeod told The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette in August.

In 2017, Cline received the local Parent Teachers Association’s Founders Award for her work at George F. Johnson Elementary School, which is given to teachers and community members who go “out of their way on behalf of children,” McLeod said.

“She was the total package,” McLeod said.

Cline’s mother, Julia Meza, told the newspapers Tuesday that an August school-supplies drive in her daughter’s honor generated donations from across the country.

“There were boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff,” Meza said.

“It was so wonderful.”

This story was originally published October 23, 2018 at 4:13 PM with the headline "A new Hilton Head memorial honors kindergarten teacher killed in SC alligator attack."