A fellow teacher wanted to honor her late coworker, and picked Bryce Harper’s big moment to do it

About a week ago, two teachers from Tacony Academy Charter School met at a bar around the corner. They’d just finished work for the day and liked to decompress over a glass of red wine at the Red Rooster Inn. It was there that Lori Piper Geiser, a reading specialist, told Alaine Porter, a third-grade teacher, about her plans for Wednesday night.

Geiser had gotten tickets to Game 3 of the National League Division Series between the Phillies and the Braves through a friend. They were great seats, right behind home plate, but she felt uneasy about the opportunity. She wasn’t a big baseball fan. She felt that she’d be taking a seat someone else would appreciate more.

Alaine was quick to debunk that notion. She was a diehard Phillies fan who grew up in a baseball family. Her brother, Alan Porter, is an MLB umpire. Lori joked that when the Phillies were on, it was hard for Alaine to focus on anything else.

“It was like time stopped,” she said.

Porter had gone to a few playoff games last season and pulled up a video on her phone. It was taken during a World Series game at Citizens Bank Park.

“Look at that, Lori,” Geiser recalled Porter saying. “You want to be there. You want to be a part of this.”

Geiser agreed. She told Porter she’d go. A few hours later, they said their goodbyes, thinking that they’d both be back in school the next week. But on Sunday night, Porter passed away unexpectedly. The cause of her death is unknown. She was 35.

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Geiser was in shock. So were her coworkers. Porter was beloved at Tacony Academy. She went above and beyond to make sure her students were set up to succeed. She met with parents one-on-one to equip them with the tools to teach their children how to read. She helped out with after-school programs over the summer and put in extra effort to make it more enjoyable for her students. She played games with them, like Sparkle, to teach them how to spell in a less laborious way.

Porter had a gift for managing a classroom and for adjusting to assignments on the fly. She could teach any grade, and any subject, and excel at it. She was born to do her job.

The news of her passing shook the school to its core. They’d never dealt with a loss like this. One of Porter’s closest friends was Johnnie Clark, a custodian. He liked to tease her by calling her “Ms. Retrop,” which is “Porter” spelled backward.

“She could take a joke,” Clark said. “If there were a bunch of teachers in a room, I’d say, ‘Hello ladies — and Ms. Retrop.’ That was how we were. She was fun-loving like that.”

When he heard the news, he was “blown away.”

“I was speechless,” Clark said. “I knew she was only 35 years old. Her birthday was only a couple of weeks ago. I went over to her classroom and said, ‘Happy birthday Ms. Retrop.’ That was only a couple of weeks ago. It was a shock.

“I’m going to miss her. I already do.”

Geiser still had her tickets for Wednesday night, and she decided to bring her friend along. She asked the school librarian to print a photo of Porter before she left for the game. She sat in her seats behind home plate and laid the photo next to her.

“I had no plan,” Geiser said. “But people started recognizing me on TV, and one coworker said, ‘Why don’t you hold up the photo of Alaine, so I can take a photo of her at the Phillies game?’ ”

Geiser decided to wait until the Phillies came up to bat. In the third inning, as Bryce Harper walked up to the plate, she lifted the photo of Porter so it could be seen on the broadcast. Harper worked a four-pitch at-bat, and, on the fourth pitch, he smashed a three-run home run to right field. Porter and Geiser were there to watch it all.

“I definitely felt that she was there with me,” Geiser said.

Clark wasn’t watching the game, but heard about the gesture after the fact.

“Our girl was at the game,” he said with a laugh.

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When Geiser returned home, her phone, email, and Facebook page started blowing up. People had seen her on TV. Fans went to Phillies fan pages and message boards to figure out who the mystery woman behind home plate was, and why she was holding a photo.

Word spread fast at Tacony Academy. The next day, Clark stopped by Geiser’s classroom. He had tears in his eyes and a big smile on his face.

“That was good stuff,” he told her.

Geiser knows that none of this will bring Porter back. She still can’t believe that she won’t be able to sip a glass of red wine with her friend at the Red Rooster this Friday. But in that moment, it felt like the perfect way to honor her.

“It was a really great feeling to have her picture up at the time when that happened,” Geiser said. “I just wanted all of these people who knew Alaine to feel good about the fact that she was there at the game. I didn’t have a plan. There was no plan at all. But she was there with me.”