Colleagues and former students recalled this week the dedication of a Scarborough Middle School special education teacher who formed strong bonds with her students.

The teacher, Sue LaHaie, 61, died last week after a bout with ovarian cancer. Her funeral was held Tuesday.

Evidence of the strong bonds LaHaie formed with students hangs on her Gorham home – a wreath with a thousand cranes of hope made by students. Students in LaHaie’s and Jen Simard’s resource rooms at Scarborough Middle School made the cranes to serve as a reminder of how much she was cared for and missed at the school.

“She was great,” said freshman Ashley Jesseman, who was taught by LaHaie for three years. “She always loved to help. Everybody loved her.”

It was LaHaie’s loving nature that students really liked about her, and some equated her attitude with that of a loving grandmother.

“I was in (her classroom) everyday after school, and she helped me out a lot,” said Erika Jackson, a junior at Scarborough High School who LaHaie taught for three years. “She always made me smile when I was in there.”

Jackson’s mother, Debbie, said her daughter gave LaHaie a picture she painted while in the eighth-grade, and three years later it was still in her classroom. Debbie Jackson credits LaHaie’s work with helping her daughter become a success.

“She was a class act all the way around. She was what the true meaning of a teacher is,” Debbie Jackson said.

LaHaie’s fellow teachers also held her in high regard, noting that she came to work early and stayed late helping her students.

“She cared about her students so much,” said Linda Descoteaux, the lead teacher on the Algonquin team at the middle school. “She would take them all home with her if she could.”

Sharon Larando taught with LaHaie since the middle school opened in the mid 1990s and enjoyed watching her interact with the middle school students.

“She was just so caring, thoughtful, always looking for the best side of each child,” she said. “She touched so many lives, not just her students, but people she worked with as well.”

Both LaHaie and Lorando were Gorham residents and often spoke to each other outside of school. When Lorando was told about the extent of LaHaie’s cancer, she became upset, but LaHaie told her not to worry and began comforting her.

“She was just such a lovely woman,” she said. “I lost a friend as well as a colleague.”

Derek Veilleux had a chance to witness LaHaie’s teaching first hand, working in her classroom as an education technician for the last four years.

“She had a way with the students, a way to get to them,” he said. “She had a great sense of humor and the kids really, really enjoyed her.”

LaHaie was born on Dec. 5, 1943, in Scranton, Penn. She graduated from Marywood College and later received a master’s degree in special education from Syracuse University.

After getting married to her husband, Roger, in 1968, LaHaie devoted herself to being a wife and mother of three children. She settled in southern Maine in 1983 and began teaching at Scarborough High School as an educational technician.

In addition to teaching, LaHaie also enjoyed shopping, traveling and dancing. She also was an active member of St. Maximilian Kolbe’s Catholic Church in Scarborough and a regular volunteer at the Preble Street soup kitchen.

Middle School Principal Joanne Sizemore has been working with LaHaie for more than 12 years and said she will be greatly missed.

“She was the most dedicated and caring teacher,” she said. “I will miss her very much.”