Lois Dear service a chance to celebrate the good things

The office at Strathmore School with huge numbers of flowers and other remembrances to teacher Lois Dear. Picture / Alan Gibson

As friends, family and students of Lois Dear gather in Thames today they will put aside the violent way she was taken from them and focus on celebrating her life and all that was good about it.

"I want to celebrate her life and say: 'Lois, I'll see you when I get up there too,"' said her brother Harley Dear. "The violence has to go. It's a celebration - it's the only way I'm going to be able to handle it."

The 66-year-old Tokoroa school teacher is being farewelled in Thames at the Civic Centre, nearly a week after she was beaten to death in her classroom.

Hundreds of people are expected to attend the 11am service, including Detective Inspector Garth Bryan - the officer heading the hunt for her killer - and the students she loved teaching.

Mr Dear said his sister would be overwhelmed by the attention she has received this week and the huge turnout expected today.

"She'd find it pretty much unbelievable. She was a humble person and she never took greatness upon herself. She would be extremely embarrassed about it as she hated being the centre of attention."

But Ms Dear has become the centre of attention this week as the public struggle to understand why a popular school teacher was beaten to death in what should have been the safety of her own classroom.

Following her death, tributes have came from all parts of the community.

Students have left messages, flowers and written poems about their favourite teacher. Colleagues have spoken about how hardworking and dedicated she was and family have remember her as a loving mother, sister, daughter and grandmother.

Today they will once again focus on that.

"We want to forget about the horrible bits and just concentrate on the good bits," said Mr Dear.

In the weeks before her death there were plenty of "good bits". Ms Dear followed her usual routine of dedicating herself to family and school.

At the beginning of June, she took her new entrants class on a trip to the Firth of Thames, at the centre of the Hauraki/Coromandel area where she lived before moving to Tokoroa 19 years ago.

The class had a picnic at Waiomu Beach, collected shells and found crabs in rock pools. "That was a neat day," said Strathmore principal Murray Kendrick, who went along.

In the second-last week of the first term, her class performed a play for her friend, fellow teacher and children's author, Dot Meharry, based on Ms Meharry's book, The Pipi and the Mussels.

Ms Meharry, a teacher at Matatoki School, south of Thames, was reportedly delighted with the performance, which was full of Ms Dear's trademark dancing and music.

Ms Dear had planned to take her class to perform the play again at Matatoki School this coming Friday.

In the last week of first term, Ms Dear celebrated her 66th birthday.

She shouted her fellow teachers lunch and they teased her about retiring.

Although she had plans to move to Matatoki, it seemed Ms Dear was unlikely to retire any time soon. "No, the children keep me young," she told her colleagues.

Her brother, Harley Dear, last saw his sister just after her birthday.

He said it was a sad occasion because a favourite aunt had died and they had to go to her funeral.

In the first week of the school holidays, Ms Dear's daughter, Jan Armstrong, and her two daughters, Renee, 6 1/2, and Abby, 2 1/2, went to Tokoroa.

They stayed with Ms Dear for two nights, visiting her 95-year-old father at his resthome, going shopping at T&T and the Warehouse, and eating at McDonald's.

On the Friday, Ms Dear accompanied her daughter and granddaughters back to their home in Matatoki, and babysat the girls while Mrs Armstrong and her husband, Graeme, went to Auckland for the weekend.

On Saturday, Ms Dear took Abby and Renee up to Te Kouma, in Coromandel, to visit her son, Kevin McNeil, and his family, but made sure she had the girls back at home by evening.

"Mum being Mum, she wanted the children back in their own beds at night so they were nice and comfy," Mrs Armstrong said.

She and her husband had a late checkout from their accommodation in Auckland but Ms Dear was anxious for them to get home so she could return to Tokoroa and prepare for school, although a week of holidays remained.

"She was just so passionate about all the children she taught. She just loved her teaching life," her daughter said.

The last time they spoke was on the Thursday night or Friday morning. Mrs Armstrong cannot remember which, but said the conversation was about school.

"I asked her if she was organised for the new term, and she said she still had things to do."

Ms Dear had been at Strathmore School for eight years and was renowned for her dedication. She sometimes arrived as early as 5.30am.

"She was always the first teacher at school," said Ngaire Taikato, who had worked with her on and off for 20 years.

Ms Dear's neighbours on Lochmaben Rd, about 2.5km from the school, said she was always out the door before 6.30am.

On the day of her murder - a Sunday - she was at Strathmore at 8am.

Police have not said what time she was killed but her car was stolen from the school between 8.30 and 9am, before assistant deputy principal Janene Baird discovered Ms Dear's body about noon.

On police advice, Ms Baird has not said how she made the discovery, but it is understood she noticed the door to the classroom was unlocked.

Her anger at Ms Dear's killer showed on her face at a press conference this week.

"It's obviously not a Strathmore past pupil," she said.

She described Ms Dear as "our elder stateperson", a woman who would "call a spade a spade" and let it be known if other teachers did something of which she dis-approved.

No one, including Ms Baird, has been able to name Ms Dear's closest friend at the school.

"We just all loved Lois. She was part of everything we did," Ms Baird said.

Outside the school students, parents and members of the close-knit Tokoroa community have places flowers, cards and poems.

One is a handwritten poem on a heart-shaped piece of paper, wrapped in plastic and decorated by pink flowers. It reads:

Now that you've gone
I won't be able to go on
I'll miss you 24/7
But I hope you'll be happy as in heaven
Life is not easy without you beside me
And that's not how life is meant to be
There's always something on the other side Ms Dear
RIP, you'll have no fear.