CORBIN — By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor

Staff and students at Bush Elementary in Laurel County are mourning the loss of a fourth-grade teacher and Christian outreach center volunteer who was killed by an allegedly drunk driver Thursday night.

Elizabeth M. Denman, 31, of Big Creek, died after a pickup truck, driven by 33-year-old Ronnie G. Hacker of McKee, crossed the center lane on Kentucky 11 in Clay County and struck Denman’s sedan head-on.

Both Denman and Hacker were pronounced dead at the scene. Hacker’s passenger, 30-year-old Bill R. Henson of Manchester, was airlifted to University of Kentucky Hospital for his injuries.

According to Kentucky State Police, Hacker was believed to have been under the influence of alcohol at the time of the crash.

Bush Elementary Principal Lisa Sibert said Denman was in her seventh year of teaching at the school. She said it was about 10 p.m. when the teachers of Bush Elementary learned of the tragedy and gathered at a teacher’s house to support each other.

“We’ve been together all night,” Sibert said. “We are a very close faculty. We all came in and counselors from the other elementary schools, middle schools and high schools have been here all day working with our students. The superintendents, they’ve called in extra people because our staff, of course, is emotional and we’ve had to have time to grieve. It was so sudden and she was such a part of our school.”

Denman taught all of Bush’s roughly 75 fourth-graders math, and also taught the Student Technology Leadership Program for every grade level.

Guidance counselors will also be back Monday.

“She was a very strong Christian that influenced so many of our kids,” Sibert said of Denman. She was “a workhorse, she was a prayer warrior, she was our rock.”

Beth Denman grew up in Big Creek in Clay County. Her parents Tom and Chris Denman moved to Big Creek from Ohio when Beth was about 18 months old to run the Joy Center, a community outreach program, in the former Big Creek Elementary school building.

Denman grew up at the Joy Center, and she continued to teach Sunday school, play piano, lead prayer time, and organize vacation Bible school, her father said.

As a senior in high school, Tom said his daughter got pregnant. She married, kept the baby, and later as an adult volunteered at a teen pregnancy center in Manchester to help other young woman going through similar circumstances.

Tom said his daughter went through her own struggles with addiction, but she overcame them with prayer and used her faith to try and help others.

“The Lord really blessed her and really brought her out of some things, and she didn’t just say thank you, she really wanted to give something back for the girls who were in the same place she was,” Tom said. “...She was giving back every day for what God helped her overcome.”

After she won her own personal battle, she started teaching, and Sibert said she was a vital part of the Bush Elementary staff.

Sibert, who is in her first year as principal, taught math across the hall from Denman for all seven years of Denman’s tenure.

“She was an amazing person,” Sibert said. “I met with students today and said ‘You guys were blessed, you had the best teacher in the world.’ Never have we heard one person — and that’s parents, students, anybody — speak unkindly of her.”

A memorial of flowers has been set up at the Bush Elementary bus loop. Sibert said it will be open from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday for mourners to leave flowers.

“She was truly an angel on earth and she touched so many lives, and she will be truly missed,” Sibert said.

Denman was on the way home from a funeral in Manchester when the accident occurred.

Family is considering a memorial fund that might benefit a possible women’s recovery center for women battling alcohol or drug addictions.

“It’s such a tragedy, but knowing Beth Denman, if she could keep one person from doing that, from drinking and driving, and if she could teach them a lesson, she would do it. She would do it in a heartbeat... It’s just kind of ironic that her passion was to keep people away from that,” Sibert said. “This was her mission to keep kids off drugs and alcohol, and I sure think Beth would want us to tell everybody, learn a lesson from this.”

Denman had two children, a first grader who attends Bush Elementary and a 13-year-old in middle school. Denman’s father said staff at Bush have offered to take turns picking up her son so he can continue school at Bush Elementary.

Funeral arrangements have not yet been set.