INDIANAPOLIS -- Hundreds of people gathered Saturday for Susan Jordan's funeral.
The hero principal at Amy Beverland Elementary School in Lawrence for 22 years died Tuesday when a school bus lurched forward into a group of kids, hitting and killing her.
But not before she pushed several students out of the way, saving some of the students she loved in her last act.
At least one of the students Susan Jordan sacrificed her life to rescue was at the funeral.
Children were present in almost every pew inside St. Luke's United Methodist Church. Their small hands clinging to tissues and their parents hands as they tried to process the loss of their hero, principal Susan Jordan.
More than 1,000 people paid their respects Saturday, including Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett.
It was a memorial service that continued Jordan's life work of teaching.
"If Susan were here I think she'd say we should commit to standing for what is right, especially for our children," Dr. Jan Combs said.
"What she did that afternoon was a heroic act, but Tuesday didn't make principal Jordan a hero. My, my, she had been a hero long before Tuesday," Hogsett said.
"My mom had a lot of favorite sayings or life lessons, as my beautiful sister would say, and one of them was this: a hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in or the kind of car I drove, but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child," her daughter Lisa Jankowski said.
State Rep. John Bartlett made a proclamation that January 30 will be Susan Jordan Day.
She will be laid to rest Sunday in Henderson, Kentucky.
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