A primary school headteacher who died the day she penned a heart-breaking letter to her pupils has been laid to rest in a coffin covered in their drawings.
Sue East was just 58 when she died on December 19 following a short battle with cancer. On the day she died she wrote to them to explain she was ‘going to die soon’ and thanked them for their ‘joy and friendship’.
In the letter, Mrs East quoted a passage from C.S Lewis’ 1952 novel, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, comparing death to sailing over the horizon in a small, round boat. She wrote: ‘Never forget there is fairy dust to be found in every situation, no matter how difficult.’
Yesterday almost 700 pupils, parents, ex-pupils and staff members crammed into Bath Abbey to say farewell to the former headteacher of St Andrew’s Church School in Bath. Past and present pupils of the school sang at the funeral, and covered Mrs East’s coffin with drawings of fairies, butterflies, love hearts, rainbows and ‘fairy dust’. Tributes paid by pupils said that they ‘loved’ their headteacher, adding she was: ‘Fun, lovely, exotic, glittery, the best teacher, kind, caring, taught us to believe in ourselves, sprinkled fairy dust everywhere.’
