When ever Aine Ni Cheanainn, who has died aged 92, visited a home where there were children, she would bring a book.
"Never sweets," the son of one of her childhood friends recalls. "Always a book."
If this formidable woman of Mayo appreciated anything, it was the value of education in general, and of audio and visual aids to the education process in particular.
Though known by her professional colleagues for such achievements as being the only woman on the first RTE Authority; the author of three books; the cofounder of the Irish Film Society, academic and linguist, to many hundreds of children and their parents Ni Cheanainn was simply a "devoted teacher . . .far ahead of her time".
As well as remembering her sugarless gifts, the same former neighbour recalls the doting visitor "had a strong sense of wanting to motivate people, to encourage them to fulfil their potential. I think some people found her a bit pushy." A former teacher at Dublin's Scoil Eoin Baiste - the national school where Ni Cheannain was headmistress for some 38 years - tells that despite her "dictatorial" demeanour, she was "very kind".
"She took care of me when I started and was quite timid. She pushed me into starting a choir. She could see that I had skills there, and believed the music would benefit the children.
"To be honest, I was a bit afraid of her until I found my feet."
The figure cut by this redheaded Gaelgoir was not intended to put the world at its ease. The late Cardinal Thomais O'Fiach referred to her as An sineadh fada na Gaeilge - an allusion both to her imposing height and to her association with the Irish language.
She reputedly spoke "beautiful Irish" and would speak as Gaeilge whenever she could.
It was the language she spoke as a child at home in the family shop - Canon's of Derryea, Kiltimagh in Co Mayo. Extremely well-stocked, it did a thriving grocery-cum-everything trade. A triangle joining Swinford, Kilkelly and Kiltimagh held one of the most congested areas of the country - "it was thick with houses". Hundreds of families subsisted on tiny one-field plots in a local economy which relied heavily on emigrants' remittances. Though a large proportion of these was spent at Canon's, the Cheanainn's "extended endless amounts of credit," according to one local who remembers the shop as a boy.
Aine grew up in a family which would "never see anyone go without . . .They certainly kept people alive."
She attended the local St Louis girls' school continuing on to Carysfort Training College. She graduated from there in 1927, qualified to teach at primary level, and went onto UCD where she gained an MA in Education.
Her first post as a primary school teacher was in Scoil Mhuire in Howth, north Co Dublin. From there she went to become head mistress at Scoil Eoin Baiste in Clontarf in 1941 - a position she held until 1979.
Kind, strict and totally dedicated she built the school so that by the early 1950s it was one of the most prestigious in the capital.
"The children weren't exactly enamoured of her," says one teacher, "but she always had their interests absolutely at heart. She was very traditional in some ways, very regimented, but she was ahead of her time in others. She was very keen on audio-visual techniques and brought in things like drama, music, tapes, films and slides to the classroom in the 1960s - a long time before the new curriculum, in 1974, began to introduce them."
Beyond the classroom, she was a member of the Irish-German Society, which saw her visit Germany in 1934 and 1952 to examine the education system there. She also was a member of the Irish branch of UNESCO in the Department of Education; a founding member of Cumann Scanan na nOg; gave lectures at the Irish Film Society; represented Ireland at conferences on film in Luxuembourg and Chicago; ran communications courses for teachers at the INTO; wrote three books - on The Heritage of Mayo, Raifteiri An File on the Co Mayo poet known as Raifteiri and another on Archbishop McHale of Tuam entitled Leon an Iarthair.
The summers were the only times she really got home to Mayo. And even on her holidays her hand was turned to things educational. She ran the Eigse Raifteiri summer school in Kiltimagh between 1972 and 1975 and also organised the Comoradh Mhic Eil in Castlebar.
A deeply religious Catholic, she is remembered by several as "tremendously idealistic", driven by what one contemporary describes as her "great vision for Ireland". "She was constantly organising, doing and working. A real de Valera woman, she had a true love of Ireland, the Irish language and belief in what could be achieved with the use of the latest technology and methods."
Her faith in the power of film and sound to educate marked her out and in 1960 she was "headhunted" to sit on the new Teilifis Eireann Authority. To the media interest of Con Crosby from the Cork Examiner, the commercial know-how of the Authority's chairman, Eamonn Andrews, the historical bent of Theo Moody and dramatic influence of Ernest Blythe, this Connacht head-mistress added a passion for the educational possibilities of the new medium.
She sat only on the first Authority and was said to have been "very disappointed" not to sit again. She was pleased, however, that Irish language and educational programming continued to have a role, albeit of erratic quality, in Teilifis Eireann's schedules. And she could take pride in the fact that she won out in a disagreement with her colleague, Blythe, over what the new medium should be called in Irish. Blythe, it seems, preferred the word teilis. But as every viewer of Irish television will testify, the new station was to be called Teilifis Eireann.
Difficult, dictatorial perhaps, she nevertheless had many, many friends; a woman who had a genuine faith in people, she always encouraged, though expected effort in return. "She'd suffer no fools," says one former colleague". "Her expectations of life were high but simple really. Work your hardest and achieve your best. That's what she wanted for people and for Ireland too, I suppose. She seemed overbearing sometimes, but her actions were always genuinely kind and affectionate."
She is buried in Derryea, Kiltimagh, Co Mayo, and is survived by her sister Margaret McNaught, her brother-in-law Jim Cannon, nephews, nieces, grandnieces, grandnephews and friends.
Aine Ni Cheanainn: born 1907; died 1999