Teacher’s Body Dug Up, ‘Curse’ of Students’ Pictures Removed

A preschool teacher’s body was exhumed and photographs of her Hmong pupils were removed from the casket to help lift a curse that the youngsters’ parents believed the children were under.

The grave of Headstart teacher Charlotte Bell, 61, was opened Tuesday at the urging of several of the parents, who are from the mountains of Laos in Southeast Asia.

Burying a beloved picture “is an honor to a lot of people” but a “disgrace and dishonor to the Hmong,” said Angela Mann, director of the local Headstart program.

“The parents felt their children were cursed and would have bad luck for the rest of their lives. I didn’t want that on my head.”

Bell had been hospitalized in December for pneumonia. She received a get-well card made by a colleague, Mann said. Shaped like a Christmas tree, the card included photos of her 36 students, more than 20 of them Hmong.

Bell died of a stroke Jan. 1, and her family tucked the card in the casket before the burial at Crystal Lake Cemetery in Minneapolis.

Hmong parents learned the pictures had been buried and demanded them back. Burying the pictures separated the children from their spirits, exposing them to bad luck, illness and early death, they said.

Sixteen children were kept home by their parents until they were reunited with their spirits.

The $700 for the exhumation was raised from private sources. Mann said she tracked down Bell’s son in Mexico for permission to exhume the body.