Dorothy Hundley Magee, 82, teacher, traveler

She also taught French at the private, college preparatory high school, using colorful descriptions to augment reading materials.

“She was so often characterized as having been a very gracious person, lovely, gracious, and kind,’’ said her husband, John. “She was a person who was always willing to try new things, and to take chances,’’ he added.

While her daughter, Catherine Milligan of Dennis, never saw her mother in the classroom, she had plenty of opportunity to be her pupil at home.

“We’d be studying whatever the textbook had to say, and she would give a little bit more color and detail to the Normans and the Huns, who they turned out to be, how they pushed each other around Europe, rather than just names and dates,’’ Milligan said.

Mrs. Magee’s father had worked as a metallurgical engineer and consultant in Santiago, Chile. Living abroad during those formidable years “gave her more respect for people of all walks of life,’’ Milligan said.

Mrs. Magee died at home in Concord May 31. She was 82.

At Manter Hall, she taught students from varied backgrounds, many of whom had nontraditional schedules, working in the theater or training to be figure skaters. They often needed individualized educational programs, and she set out to craft a plan for each.

She often peppered lessons with engaging facts that she had picked up from her adventures.

“She always had interesting bits of information that made a subject a whole lot more interesting,’’ her daughter said.

Mrs. Magee studied at Santiago College high school before moving to the Northeast to attend Wellesley College. She sang her way through college, performing with the Wellesley chorus, and earned her bachelor’s degree in Spanish and literature in 1948.

She met John Magee while studying at Wellesley, and they were married in 1949 after moving to New York, where she worked as a floor manager at Abraham & Straus department store for a time. She also helped foreign students adjust to life in the United States, working for the New York-based Institute for International Education.

They moved to the Boston area in 1950, living in Arlington before building a home in Concord in 1954.

She left the school to raise her three children in the early 1950s. While they were in school, she volunteered at local schools, libraries, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Emerson Hospital Auxiliary.

Her longtime friend and neighbor Barbara Larner described her as “a delightful person, very calm and collected.’’

Mrs. Magee once arrived at home and found that two escaped prisoners from Concord State Prison had confronted her daughter. The two men ordered her and her daughter into her car, and they headed toward New Hampshire. Around Haverhill, they were stopped in traffic, and Mrs. Magee and her daughter bolted from the car, found the nearest service station, and alerted authorities. Their car was recovered a short time later.

“Dotty said to the girl, ‘Let’s go,’ and they jumped out,’’ Larner said. “She saved them.’’

“It was quick thinking and seizing the moment,’’ her husband said.

She and her husband traveled the world together. One particularly memorable trip was to China during rocky political times in the late 1970s.

“She was stunningly beautiful,’’ he daughter said. “When she was a young woman, she looked like the actresses of the time. She was always interested in what people had to say and meeting new people and was a very open and warm person.’’

In addition to her husband and daughter, Mrs. Magee leaves two sons, John of San Francisco and Andrew of Concord; her sister Mary Jo May of Easton, Md.; three grandsons; two granddaughters; and two great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. today in Trinity Episcopal Church in Concord. Burial was private.