Hundreds Mourn Whitfield Teacher Friday

A memorial service was held Friday for Janet Esrock, the Chesterfield woman and Teacher and coach after sustaining serious injuries in a

By one informal police estimate, there were at least 500 people in the standing room only crowd at Temple Emanuel late Friday morning. Mourners stood in the lobby after many of them parked across the street at .

Those in attendance heard friends and family speak of a woman dedicated to her family, her students and her school--"she literally breathed Whitfield," one speaker said. Another described her as someone who did not have the word "no" in her vocabulary.

Her cousin described Esrock, who was a 1979 graduate of, as a champion of the underdog and a sentimentalist, wanting to learn how to play Taps on the trumpet for her grandfather's funeral, figuring it out, except for how the emotion of the moment would impact the sound.

Janet Esrock's husband, Chuck paid tribute to members of the Monarch Fire Protection District who responded to the accident scene, as well as the staff at Mercy Hospital St. Louis which cared for Janet and their son Jonathan, who also sustained serious injuries in the crash but was released from the hospital last week.

Visitors were being taken Friday afternoon between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. at Whitfield School.