She catered to her students

Pegasus School founder Laura Hathaway, who 25 years ago turned her vision of a school that challenged even the brightest students into a reality, died at her home Sunday. She was 67.

Hathaway also served as the head of the school for its entire tenure up until the time of her death, even as she fought a long battle with cancer.

“That school was her entire life pretty much. She was completely dedicated. Every student and parent knew who she was,” said former student Lisa Wiley, who graduated in 1996 and now practices law in Fullerton.

Wiley credits Pegasus for putting her way ahead of the curve when she eventually went to public high school by offering students opportunities to learn at any level, instead of catering solely to the class average. One particularly precocious student in her eighth-grade class, Wiley recalls, was being taught calculus while other students were learning at a wide range of levels.

Before founding Pegasus, Hathaway was a public school teacher who worked with gifted students. The public schools, she felt, didn’t offer brighter students enough of a challenging, intellectually stimulating environment, so she founded a summer program in Fountain Valley that soon grew into a full-time preschool.

Within a few years of its inception the school moved to its present location — a neighborhood off of Adams Avenue on the border of Huntington Beach and Costa Mesa — and continued to add grades every year until it offered an education for kids through eighth grade. It now serves 565 students, mostly from Newport Beach and Huntington Beach.

“She was very dedicated and passionate in educating and tenacious in the way that she went about growing the school,” said Mark Danner, whose three kids went through the school and who now serves as the chairman of its board of directors.

Even as she underwent medical procedures and the diagnosis worsened, she stayed intimately involved in the administration, coming to campus when she could and participating in meetings over the phone when she couldn’t, said Sue Harrison, the school’s director of advancement.

Memorial services were at the Pegasus School at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to the Laura Hathaway/Brittany Taylor Memorial Fund.