‘Providing a little bit of light’: Penn Middle School supports community, local cancer patients in honor of late teacher

Up until three weeks before Jackie Landram died from ovarian cancer, she was doing what she loved: teaching.

Landram taught seventh grade English at Penn Middle School in Penn Township for 16 years. She died at home at age 44 on Jan. 25, 2022, following a seven year battle with cancer. Her last day of work was just weeks earlier, on Jan. 7.

“Near the end, she couldn’t even sleep because her liver hurt, so she could only lay on one side,” said her husband, Pete Landram. “But she’d be up at 6 o’clock getting ready for school.

“I asked her ‘Why are you going to school?’ And she said she just had to.”

Landram’s colleagues, including math teacher Meredith Hodge, took notice of her strength.

“She was just the ultimate example of living with grit. She showed up the last couple of months with a walker,” Hodge said. “She’d still be here, so happy, still teaching the kids and just keeping on. She just kept going.”

Throughout Landram’s fight against cancer, Penn Middle School students and staff held fundraisers for the National Ovarian Cancer Society. Since her passing, they have continued honoring her name through a charity called Landram’s Light.

Drawing on Landram’s love of running, the school has dedicated to her its annual spring 5K at Bushy Run. After the race, teachers gather the students and present the GRIT Award, given in Landram’s name to honor students who exemplified grace, resilience, integrity or tenacity throughout the academic year.

The school used donations — primarily raised through student events such as school dances and dress-down days for teachers — to resume its holiday meal distributions for local families in need.

“We have people in our own walls that need assistance,” said STEM and personal finance teacher Rick Steele. “We can’t forget those people.”

The school gave 13 meals to families for Thanksgiving and 17 meals around Christmas.

The charity’s latest initiative is packing tote bags for cancer patients receiving treatment at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center in Monroeville.

“That’s probably the biggest thing we’re looking at right there — just providing a little bit of light and a little bit of hope to somebody who’s going through this struggle right now,” Steele said.

Students, including Landram’s 13-year-old son Dylan, who is a sixth grader at Penn Middle, packed 50 tote bags Thursday with a blanket, water bottle, ChapStick, hand warmers, coloring book and other care items. The bags also include a beanie from the company Love Your Melon, which donates 50% of its net profit to nonprofits that support the fight against pediatric cancer.

Letters from the school’s eighth grade English students, created as part of a unit on letter writing, were added to the tote bags, said language arts and literature teacher Kelly Podkul.

Podkul drew inspiration for the items in the tote bags from Holly Hallman, a teacher at Wendover Middle School in Hempfield who began a similar Chemo Comfort Care Totes initiative in 2017 for patients at the UPMC cancer center in Unity.

Landram’s Light aims to donate more tote bags next year and keep an emergency fund on hand in case an immediate need arises for a family in the district.

“(We want to) just continue to build the program, keep the momentum that we started going,” Steele said, “but, ultimately, not forget Jackie Landram, who had a profound impact on all of us.”

Even the sixth grade students who never had the chance to meet Landram are supportive of the initiative, Steele said.

“She obviously had a big impact in that school that maybe I wasn’t even aware of,” said Pete Landram. “They go above and beyond to keep her memory alive. It just amazes me.”