HOLMES BEACH – Friends, family and Anna Maria Elementary (AME) staff gathered at the school on Saturday to honor Kim Bobo and dedicate a memorial garden in her honor.
The beloved member of the AME staff worked as the school’s speech pathologist for 34 years, touching many lives in the process.
Bobo and her husband, Allen, moved to Anna Maria Island in 1988, having their son, Matt, shortly after. She finished her master’s degree in speech while her children were young and began her career at AME. Anyone who has visited the AME campus is familiar with the red train caboose on the property. Although it is used for storage today, when Mrs. Bobo joined the AME family, it was her first classroom.
“You talk about finding a place in paradise,” Allen Bobo said. “Anna Maria Island in general, then you find this school and wind up in the caboose by the bay. It was just paradise for her and she absolutely loved it.”
Allen Bobo was vice-president of The Center of Anna Maria Island for 16 years and recalls the kids coming to The Center for activities, and how it fostered a camaraderie among the people who call AMI home.
“All the kids on the Island were playing all these sports at the community center, so you sat there in the bleachers with everybody,” he said. “Everybody got to know each other. The old joke was, ‘It takes a community to raise a kid.’ Everybody raised each other’s kids out here.”
In honor of her service to AME and the thousands of children over the years who’ve passed through the school’s doors, a memorial garden has been created on the property, ensuring her memory will live on for many years to come.
“They did a friendship memorial garden in her honor,” Bobo’s son, Matt, said. “Some teachers and former staff came out last week and helped dig up what was there and re-plant and put down mulch to make it nice. A plaque should be here in the coming days that will stand in the garden.”
Fundraising efforts from the AME PTO helped make the garden possible.
“Mrs. Bobo was a long-time, valued staff member of the AME family, spending her entire career at AME,” AME Principal Mike Masiello said. “She was an outstanding person and speech-language pathologist and will be missed. We are happy to be able to dedicate a garden space in her name. Kim was a friend to all and touched so many lives, especially students and staff at AME.”
