Fitness tribute
Drunken driving victim remembered as athlete, educator

Students at Indian Hills Elementary walk along a path dedicated to Beulah Talayumptewa on Wednesday. Talayumptewa, who was a teacher at Indian Hills, was killed in August of this year by a DUI driver. — © 2009 Gallup Independent / Adron Gardner

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Phil Stake
Staff writer

GALLUP — Last Wednesday Indian Hills Elementary School honored a beloved teacher who lost her life this year to a drunken driver.Beulah Talayumptewa taught fifth grade for most of her tenure at Indian Hills Elementary, but she had just started teaching fourth grade in August, when a drunken driver collided with her car on N.M. Highway 371 between Farmington and Crownpoint.

“Basically we were coming back from Durango,” Talayumptewa’s husband, Darryl Talayumptewa, said recently. “We were dropping my son off to start college ... and we both had to work the next day ... they were driving down the wrong lane and you couldn’t tell because it was at a bend in the road.”

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