June Lanham, 78, retired Amityville teacher

Whether in a classroom or concert hall, June Lanham was happiest around her loves: children and music. There wasn't a student in need she wouldn't help, friends and relatives said, and there wasn't a musical performance she would miss.

Lanham, one of Amityville's first African American teachers, died last Friday of pancreatic cancer at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip. The Lindenhurst resident was 78.

Lanham was the second of six children in a close-knit family. She grew up in Amityville, and one of her first jobs as a teenager was working for the Amityville Record newspaper, said her son, Bill, of Forest Hills.

The Record was run by the family of Robert Gunnison, who is director of school affairs at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. "I remember her grace and her determination to succeed," Gunnison said. "She left an impression on everybody she met."

In 1950, Lanham graduated sixth in her class at Amityville Memorial High School. She then studied education and geography at Hunter College in New York, her son said. After receiving a bachelor of arts degree in 1954, she began working for the Amityville school district, and pursued her master's degree in education from Hunter, which she received in 1958.

Lanham spent her teaching career primarily in Amityville elementary schools, but briefly taught in the middle school.

She was a gifted teacher, said her longtime colleague Clara Leftenant-Jordan, of North Babylon. "She could break things down to the smallest element and build on it," she said.

Lanham would often be sent struggling students, her son said. One of her motivational tools was to have students repeat to themselves, "I know I can," he said. She retired in 1992.

Lanham married William "Albert" Lanham in 1959, and they settled in Lindenhurst. Later, as a Jehovah's Witness, she traveled the world, attending religious conferences in Germany, South Africa and Japan. Lanham loved travel, her son said, and their house was full of postcards. "She liked to experience different cultures and see how people live," he said.

Known for colorful outfits and hats, Lanham wanted to stand out, said her sister Christine Hines, of Riverdale, Ga. Even as a child, Hines said, Lanham would protest having to wear the same style dresses as her sisters. "She would say, 'I don't want something like everybody else!' " Hines said.

A musician and singer, Lanham once aspired to be a classical pianist, her son said, and she played regularly, including musicals at her school. She also loved to attend every musical event she could, from an opera performance to a Chaka Khan concert. So devoted was she to music, her son said, that she refused to go to an assisted living facility without her beloved upright piano.

In addition to her son and sister, Lanham is survived by her sister Roberta Alcala, of Findlay, Ohio, and her brother, Gerald Hunter, of Arcadia, Calif.

A wake is scheduled Friday from 2 to 4 p.m. and from 6 to 9 p.m. at Joseph A. Slinger-Hasgill Funeral Home in Amityville. A funeral service is planned Saturday at 10 a.m. at Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses in Amityville, followed by burial in Amityville Cemetery.