Under a light drizzle of rain Saturday in Buford, hundreds of mourners dressed in black stood at the graveside of Apalachee High School math teacher Ana Cristina Irimie, laid their hands on each other and sang Romanian hymns over her casket.
The somber ceremony, steeped in Romanian Orthodox traditions, was led mostly in her native tongue and with singing and chanting. But all went silent at the end, as mourners quietly made their way to her casket and sprinkled dirt into her grave.
Irimie, 53, was killed at Apalachee High in Winder on Sept. 4 in a mass shooting, along with three others. Nine were injured.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
She is survived by her husband, Dorin, who greeted mourners by her casket before the service. Her brother and sister-in-law and other relatives traveled from Romania to attend, but her mother was too frail to make the trip, said Gabrielle Buth, Irimie’s niece.
Irimie grew up in Romania, where she danced with a traditional Romanian dance group she traveled with. Her dance group came to Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics, after which she stayed in Georgia. Here, she met her husband and settled into a Romanian Orthodox community.
For a while when she settled here, she waited tables to earn a living, Buth said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. One of her customers noticed her math skills and offered her an accounting job at his company.
As the years went on, Irimie was unhappy working a desk job, Buth said, so her husband suggested she go back to school. In 2016, she graduated early from the University of North Georgia with plans to become a teacher. At the graduation, her professor went up to her husband to say he “had never met a more ambitious person than Cristina.”
“She was so determined to be a teacher,” Buth said. “She felt the calling in her soul.”
Leaders of her church say Irimie regularly volunteered at cultural festivals and events, leading dance classes, serving meals and making everyone around feel welcome. She did not have children of her own but loved teaching them, helping them solve math problems or conquer a complicated dance step.
Imagine a grown woman riding sneakers with wheels through a school hallway, Buth said. If Irimie had had such sneakers, “she would have rolled through the hallways of that school, happily,” Buth said. ”That’s the kind of person she was.”
Irimie viewed her students at Apalachee High School as her kids. The day before she died, she baked a birthday cake for herself to share with her students to celebrate her belated birthday. She brought the cake and pizza to class the day of the school shooting.
”She died for them like a mom would,” Buth said. “The mothers that can kiss their children tonight because they were in Cristina’s class, and she died for them.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Irimie’s body lay in an open white casket in the funeral chapel. White, red and pink roses in bouquets and wreaths surrounded her and the stage in the crowded room. Singers and chanters in traditional Romanian folk dress gathered around her casket during the entire service and sang hymns.
“Today, here and now, it is hard to logically explain why, and it is even harder to console those suffering tremendously,” Bishop Andrei of The Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America, said at the funeral. “May her good deeds be rewarded and be inscribed in the book of life, and may her memory be kept eternal from generation to generation.”
The week has been full of vigils and gatherings to honor and mourn Irimie, including a candlelight vigil at Apalachee High School on Thursday, and a Friday night viewing that was livestreamed for her family in Romania.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
At the viewing, Irimie’s husband Dorin stayed by her side, at times stroking her face and crying.
“He said she once told him, ‘I could never live without you.’ And then he started laughing and crying at the same time, and he goes, ‘And how am I supposed to do it now?’” Buth said.
Irimie’s mother, watching the viewing from a screen in Romania, wept as she saw her daughter in the casket, Buth said.
At the Saturday funeral service, hundreds of people squeezed into the wooden pews, lined the walls of the funeral chapel and later walked down to her graveside, holding candles. Teachers at Apalachee High School also attended and wore yellow and navy ribbons to symbolize their connection to Irimie.
After the service, the family and church hosted a memorial meal in her honor, another Romanian tradition.
Students have found other ways to memorialize Irimie, including one who channeled his grief into his music and wrote a song dedicated to Irimie. His video went viral on TikTok with nearly 13 million views.
“It doesn’t shock us that she died trying to save someone that she loved, because that’s who she was,” Buth said. “As a mom of school-aged children, I can only pray and hope that my children would be in a class with a teacher so dedicated to them.”
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