'Trip's Tips' book shares life lessons from late teacher
In a book by retired St. Raphael football coach Jim Brown of Naperville, an angel who once worked as a teacher looks down on her former students with joy.
She sees them leading happy lives, no longer struggling with the challenges she helped them overcome - challenges of loneliness, low self-esteem, obesity, bullying, schoolwork and stress.
The angel is Brown's daughter, former Plainfield North High School physical education teacher Susan Triplett Cunningham. She's an angel because she died on Oct. 20, 2015, stabbed at age 47 by her husband, who then took his own life.
Through the words of the angel in the book "Trip's Tips: The Road to a Better Life," Cunningham's lessons live on. They're lessons of positivity, reliability, self-care, hard work, friendliness, family and helping out. Lessons of life.
Cunningham's father compiled "Trip's Tips" into a story after hearing an outpouring of gratitude from students his daughter influenced.
"I didn't realize she did so much good until we were at the visitation for the funeral and kids were coming by saying how she had helped them," Brown said. "She just went about and did it and didn't say, 'Look at me!'"
He was helped along by others in the Plainfield school district who wrote drafts, shared comments on the tips and had their students create artwork to illustrate the story.
Tips like "smile at least five times a day," "be nice to your siblings - it is the longest relationship of your life," "take care of your body and your mind" and "be a person others can trust and count on" wound their way into Cunningham's PE lessons and her interactions with students.
Plainfield North Principal Ross Draper remembers Cunningham fondly and has helped promote Brown's book, which now is available for free online at trippstips.net. Draper says teachers at Plainfield North and Plainfield Central as well as district staffers have picked up paper copies of the book to carry on Cunningham's memory - and her positive life advice.
The book helps educate people on all the good she did and trickles down into the community, Draper says, and he praises Brown for writing it.
"God bless the man," Draper said. "He is a good human being and just does good things with everything he touches."
Brown dedicated the book to Cunningham's children, Taylor and Nick, an 8-year-old and a Plainfield North sophomore now in the custody of him and his wife, Marcia.
"I hope it will help you find your road to the best life possible for each of you," Brown wrote to his grandchildren in the prelude to the book. "She certainly has inspired me, as she has so many others, to find that road."