Tributes for teacher

NEWPORT BEACH — The theater at Eastbluff Elementary School glistened with signs of hope and promise on Thursday afternoon — pink roses, childhood photographs, a boombox playing favorite songs — as students and colleagues honored a teacher who, they said, rarely had a downbeat moment.

At 2 p.m., more than 100 students, teachers, administrators and family members gathered at Eastbluff to pay tribute to Candace Tift, who died in a bicycling accident in August. Tift, 31, had taught the fourth and fifth grades at the school.

“We will think of Mrs. Tift and we will smile, or laugh, or be sad, or say to a friend, ‘Remember the time when … ,’ or we may even cry,” said Eastbluff Principal Charlene Metoyer. “But we will remember her forever.”

During the hour-long service, a number of speakers shared their memories of Tift. The front of the theater featured a row of tables scattered with pink rose petals, along with stands displaying pictures of Tift at different times in her life. Beneath the podium was a larger portrait and three roses laid out in a bouquet.

In remembering Tift, the speakers portrayed her as a vivacious woman with a quick smile and sharp sense of humor, a hardworking teacher and a devoted mother to her 1-year-old son, Owen.

“The thing she loved most about teaching was seeing you guys at the beginning of the year, and then seeing how you were by the end of the year,” her husband, Wade Tift, told the students assembled. “There was a huge difference, and that difference is why she loved teaching.”

At one point, a group of Eastbluff faculty members stood in line with a microphone and described different aspects of Tift’s teaching style. Karen Selby, who once shared a classroom with Tift, praised her ability to spot children’s potential.

“Sometimes, Mrs. Tift looked through magnifying glasses to see the best in each student,” Selby said. “She chose her glasses wisely.”

After the speeches, students held a floral processional, walking to the front of the room and placing pink roses in vases. Metoyer presented to Wade Tift a basket filled with artwork that his wife’s students had made following her death. On one side of the theater was a wooden bookcase, filled with children’s books, that Eastbluff families had assembled for the Tifts’ son.

In addition to Thursday’s tributes, the Eastbluff Elementary School Foundation has started a fund to plant a tree on campus in Tift’s memory.

“I’ve told people, if Candace was destined to have only 31 years, how lucky we were to have four of them,” Metoyer said.