Honoring Carlie Foutch: Carlie Foutch, class of 2025, passed away last year

Then-junior Carlie Foutch spent most of her jewelry and sculpture class at the belt sander, standing up from her wheelchair. She was determined to sand the wooden pieces for her jewelry box even if she felt weak from her cancer treatments.

If she couldn’t figure out how to solve a math problem in her Algebra 3 class, she wouldn’t give up. She knew she was capable. And so she kept trying.

“She was gritty and tough,” Carlie’s uncle and psychology teacher Brett Kramer said. “If you told her that she wasn't healthy enough to do her school work, she would take that as a challenge and say, ‘Watch me.’”

Carlie would’ve graduated this month with the rest of the class of 2025. She passed away from acute myeloid leukemia — a bone marrow cancer — in January of last year, leaving an impact on her friends, family, basketball teammates and teachers.

Her passion and stubbornness stuck out to her friends and teachers. She always found a way to bring basketball into a conversation with friends and teachers, and her Make-a-Wish request allowed her to meet the WNBA team Los Angeles Sparks.

She was positive and always put others before herself — something her friends, teachers and mom, Misty Kramer, remember about her.

“Whenever she would see that I was sad, she would put her hand on my face and say, ‘Mom, it's gonna be okay,’” Misty Kramer said. “So even when things were tough, she was doing her best to cheer everybody up around her. She didn't care how crappy she felt [or] how weak she felt.”

SM East moms of now-seniors who were friends with Carlie — Maria Worthington, Jessica Peters and Kelly Martucci — helped pay for a senior tile dedicated to Carlie. 

“She is a member of the senior class and will always be a member of the senior class,” Worthington said. “And she will be there May 20 [at graduation] with them in spirit.”

During her junior year at East, Carlie joined the girls JV-varsity basketball team, as she wanted to play basketball for the Sparks. She showed up to an open gym, shot baskets and went to as many practices as she could, despite being physically drained.

However, her passion and resilience inspired her teammates to appreciate their ability to play basketball.

“She made us all remember our love for the sport and how grateful we should be that we are still able to be physically active,” Carlie’s teammate and senior Rachel Condon said. “Yes, of course, the sport can be tiring at times, but we're so lucky to be able to play it because Carlie would have given anything to be able to play with us.”

The week after she passed on Jan. 28, the girls varsity basketball team played against Olathe North, and they started the game with four players instead of five — leaving a spot for Carlie. 

Carlie’s tribute game was the first time in seven years they won against Olathe North, with a score of 39-29.

“Everybody was trying to play as hard as they could, because it was for Carlie,” varsity basketball player and junior Fina Kessler said.

During her classes at school, Carlie was able to connect with her Algebra 3 teacher, Spencer Feldkamp, who had cancer when he was 23 years old.

“When you're going through something like that, you just want your normal life back,” Feldkamp said. “And so my goal each day was to try to give Carlie a chance to live a normal life while she was here at school.”

Towards the end of her time at East, Carlie became too sick to go to school. She spent some of her time in bed making a Stitch sticker — from “Lilo and Stitch” — to give to her friend, senior Clara Peters. Peters still keeps the sticker in a box on her desk.

“I thought it was really sweet that she thought to make that for me,” Peters said. “Especially since she's so passionate about Stitch too, it felt really personal.”

Carlie’s time in the hospital was spent working on her book, “Finding Myself,” about her journey being diagnosed with cancer where she insisted her June 16 birthday was in summer, not spring. In school, she took multiple math classes junior year because of her love for math, and she was grateful for the opportunity to go to school in person — even if it was only for four months.

“I don't want to leave anything [about Carlie] out,” Brett Kramer said. “Because it matters.”

Carlie’s first jewelry and sculpture project was a cancer awareness ribbon she cut out of metal, and her last project was a wooden jewelry case. She never got to finish it.

“I have the pieces in a drawer still,” Jewelry and Sculpture teacher Jennifer Hensley said. “I don't really know what to do with it.”

To honor Carlie, her hometown high school in Belleville, KS has made their class color orange, like the leukemia cancer ribbon. At their graduation, they’ll leave an empty chair for her with flowers and a graduation cap.

In the center of the senior tiles in the East gym hallway, Carlie’s name can be found along with musical notes, representing her time in choir, and a basketball swishing through a hoop. 

Her tile says: “Be the light.”

“She just had a light about her,” Hensley said. “Her favorite color was yellow, and it made so much sense because [there] was just sunshine and light around her.”