After going through some rough times early in her teaching career, including suffering a near-fatal fall just two weeks after starting her career in Gering, Shelly Revelle-Muggli has enjoyed a memorable and rewarding career as a vocal music instructor, including the last 15 years at Gering High School.
JEFF FIELDER Editor
GERING – After spending her first three years of teaching in Laporte, Colorado, followed by two years at Shelton Public Schools in eastern Nebraska, Shelly Revelle-Muggli looked forward to teaching and living closer to her family in the Panhandle.
Muggli, who graduated from Banner County High School in 1996, was hired in 2006 to be the general music teacher at Northfield Elementary School in Gering.
“I grew up on a farm and ranch in Banner County, and my whole family – like my parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and my sister and brother – still lived in the Harrisburg/Gering area,” she said. “I hadn’t been living a long way from home, but it was far enough away that I wasn’t able to get back to see my family as often as I would have liked. I just thought, ‘This is silly. I could teach and do the same things I had been doing but I could do it here and be around my support system.”
Muggli taught at Northfield Elementary School for two weeks before Labor Day weekend arrived. To celebrate the holiday, Muggli and several members of her family headed to Laramie, where they planned to attend a University of Wyoming Cowboys football game and spend time at the family cabin just outside of Laramie.
That fall there had been a huge forest fire in the area, and Muggli and some of her family members wanted to get a closer look at some of the damage. So, they hopped in a pickup and began driving slowly down a dirt road that they were familiar with. Muggli and a few others traveled in the pickup bed.
As they were driving, the pickup went over a bump in the road. They weren’t driving fast – Muggli estimates they were probably going only about 5 miles per hour – but it was enough of a bump to cause Muggli to lose her balance. She tumbled out of the pickup bed, hitting her head hard on the ground. She was knocked unconscious.
“It was just a freak accident,” Muggli said.
But it was a very serious accident.
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