One day last spring, Bozeman High School math teacher Ashley Chilton noticed there were suddenly wooden benches near her colleague’s classroom, transforming an overlooked space into a welcoming gathering spot for students during their lunch.

The handmade benches had quietly been placed there by math teacher Kelly Fulton.

“He had taken the time to go and build benches because kids were sitting outside of his room eating lunch and they deserved somewhere to sit,” Chilton said.

For those who knew him, the act illustrates how Fulton moved through life — with care, love and dedication to those around him. He was a force for good in constant motion, squeezing the most joy out of each day and focusing on the well-being of students in and out of the classroom.

Fulton, 40, died Oct. 9, after he was hit by a car while biking near the intersection of Oak St. and 15th Ave. on Oct. 4. He was taken to a Billings hospital where he died from his injuries.

A memorial service is scheduled on Oct. 29 starting at 1 p.m. at Bozeman High School, where he taught for almost 11 years.

This week, the area around his classroom has become a space to hold the love and grief shared by Bozeman High. A wall by the classroom door is covered in Post-It note messages from students and staff. Flowers and a bowtie have been placed on nearby stools.

Through the sadness and grief, there’s a sense of community and support in the school. Chilton attributes it to the kind of person Fulton was.

“It’s his way. It’s the way he was, that’s what I’m seeing within (our school). I’m seeing his spirit kind of live on within everybody. Everybody’s trying to almost be a better version of themselves,” she said.

Those who spoke to the Chronicle described a man full of curiosity, passion for learning and love for his family and friends. His own hobbies were infused with acts of service for those around him, including woodworking, baking, beer brewing and designing.

He was a teacher who sent personal messages to his students to show they were appreciated. He learned how to make pysanky, a traditional Ukrainian Easter egg, to teach his students geometry and curated a Mr. Fulton’s question-of-the-day board to engage the whole school in a moment of wonder each day.

He was a friend who checked in on colleagues and dropped what he was doing to help them.

He was a father who built a wooden crib used by both of his sons, Everett and Alister, and regularly shared his “dad-wins” with his students and colleagues.

Finding his calling

Fulton was born and raised in Billings and attended Minnesota’s St. Olaf College. It was there he met his future wife, Elizabeth Fulton in 2003. Both ran on the college’s cross country team and they were set up on a cross country date, Elizabeth said.

As they started to get to know each other, Fulton was always so much fun to be around, Elizabeth said.

In 2006, the couple spent the summer biking across the country. Starting in Anacortes, Washington, they spent 89 days biking until they reached the Atlantic Ocean at Bar Harbor, Maine. By the end of the trip, the two were engaged.

“I have so many wonderful memories from that trip,” she said.

Fulton graduated with a master’s in architecture in 2009 from Montana State University. Shortly after, he and Elizabeth moved to China for a year to teach English. It was there he fell in love with teaching.

When they moved back to Billings, Fulton got a job as an architect but sitting at a computer was not the right fit for him, Elizabeth said.

“That year that he was an architect, he would go to the office early and then he would get out at 3:30 p.m. and he volunteered at Senior High coaching. When he was having a hard time being an architect and sitting at a computer all day, he thought ‘Why am I going into the office early to volunteer to be with kids when it could be my profession?’” she said.

Teaching was more than a profession for him, it was his calling, she said.

It was in Billings that Fulton and Elizabeth would create the town’s Run Turkey Run in 2011, an annual Thanksgiving road race that still takes place. It raises money for organizations tackling food insecurity in the Billings area, a point of pride for Fulton.

When the couple moved to Bozeman and bought a house, Fulton and Elizabeth spent three or four summers renovating it. Fulton, calling on his architecture design talent, drew up all the plans for the redesign. It was a skill he regularly shared with friends and family.

“He’s probably designed at least six decks,” she said with a laugh.

Fulton was a collector of hobbies, including running, hiking, biking, building and restoring wood canoes, playing piano and euphonium and baking. The night before his accident he made banana bread muffins for his children’s day care.

“We had a lot of adventures. He loved doing and seeing new things and traveling. He didn’t like to sit, really,” Elizabeth said with a laugh. “He was either outside hiking or biking or running or he was inside baking or making Ukrainian Easter eggs or making music or traveling.”

Thanksgiving is Elizabeth’s favorite holiday, when the couple would regularly spend time cooking together. Recently, their 5-year-old developed a love of pho, leading Fulton to learn to make pho and ramen stock.

“He was always trying out new recipes,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve always loved cooking and it was great to share that with him.”

It was that passion and curiosity he worked to instill in his students, alongside math.

“I’m the math nerd in the family and math was the way to work with kids (for Kelly). He believed his job was to teach kids how to learn and how to think and how to become empathetic, caring people and learn some math in the process,” Elizabeth said.

Bow ties and

Easter eggs

Those who worked alongside Fulton described someone dedicated to his students, colleagues and the joys of learning.

“Kelly was just unbelievable. He was innovative, really hardworking. I mean he had a whole online class long before online teaching was a thing. He always had these great ideas. He really cared about his students and cared about building relationships with the students,” Chilton said.

Chilton met Fulton when she first started at the high school six years ago.

“I remember being new to the (math) department,” Chilton said. “He was just this welcoming force and greeted me with kindness and ‘How can I help you? What can I do to make your life easier?’ and was a big, strong personality of helpfulness.”

Fulton would stop by Chilton’s room every morning to say hi, share a story about his children or a new idea for his classroom.

“Every day, as I’m leaving, I would see him in the halls with somebody chatting and having that same cheerleader or uplifting conversation with someone,” Chilton said.

In the last week, a GoFundMe was established for Fulton’s family. As of Friday afternoon, it raised over $145,000 of its $200,000 goal. Alongside the donations are dozens of comments from current and former students, their families, colleagues and people throughout Montana’s running community.

“All of those are heart wrenching to read through,” Chilton said. “It’s like what I’m feeling about him and how he was, everybody felt that way. He had this big spirit throughout the community that I guess I don’t realize how far his big reach extended.”

Bozeman High Principal Dan Mills said Fulton was a positive person and the high school has tried to harness some of that positivity as they navigate their grief.

“He’s a teacher that our students remember. He’s a teacher that our students here who are seniors who had him as freshman would go back and say hello to. His legacy is intertwined with those students and those families that he worked with here at Bozeman High,” Mills said.

Mills, who moved from Michigan to work at Bozeman High, said he remembers the first time he met Fulton during his interview phase at an after-school social event for teachers.

“We sat next to each other at that event and talked for a long time. I remember distinctly what a kind individual he was upon that first meeting and how welcome he made me feel,” Mills said. “He was the kind of guy that you’d meet and initially you knew you liked him.”

While there was no doubt Fulton was a good math teacher, Mills said, his teaching also focused on inspiring kids to wonder, to think and to ask questions.

“To walk into Kelly’s classroom at any given day, you’d see groups of students working at difficult math problems together at the board and using that sort of physical momentum of moving around the room, checking their work with each other, talking to each other and then regrouping as a whole class,” Mills said.

Mills remembers when Fulton brought the pysanky, or Ukrainian Easter egg, project to him as a faculty professional learning activity and then spun it off into a geometry lesson for his own students.

“He was not someone who wanted to just keep his passions to himself. He wanted to impact others with the things that he cared about. I could be a principal for a hundred years and I don’t think I’ll have another teacher design a professional learning session around painting pysanky eggs and how that relates to geometry and humanities,” Mills said.

Chilton also recalled the Ukrainian Easter egg project and how excited Fulton was about the geometry lesson he designed for his students where they were able to create their own egg.

“He brought all of the eggs to me one morning to show me. He was just so proud of the kids,” she said.

Eric Humberger was the math department chair at Bozeman High when Fulton started teaching. They had been friends since, said Humberger, who now teaches at Gallatin High School.

“He made you feel like you could truly be you around him. He accepted you for the person you are. He made you feel comfortable around him,” Humberger said. “I appreciate and miss that so much.”

Throughout the last week, Post-It note remembrances have overtaken Fulton’s classroom wall and a plan took shape to honor him at Friday night’s cross town football match using a symbol that was distinctive to their teacher: a bow tie.

The Friday night lights illuminated a smattering of bow ties in the student section, a visible reminder of the man who inspired joy, infectious positivity and insatiable curiosity.

In Mr. Fulton’s own words, quoted on one yellow Post-It note, “Be good, do good things and be kind to each other.”