Marie Boylan, 102; educator kept learning

Then, she went to a Legal Sea Foods restaurant with family for her favorite fish chowder and a martini, recalled Kristin Shea-Davies of London, her great-niece and self-described soulmate.

At her 102d birthday, in December, Ms. Boylan again put on her heels and, though using a walker, twirled around the floor on the arm of Dana Ramish, president of Sophia Snow Place in West Roxbury.

“Auntie E felt it was important to enjoy life and not have regrets,’’ Shea-Davies said. “Once you made a choice, you didn’t look back at what could have been. For her, being successful meant working hard and enjoying what you have.’’

Ms. Boylan, who went from teaching to supervising elementary education for the Boston public schools over 51 years and later trained teachers at Boston State College for another decade, died of cardiovascular failure Oct. 11 at Sophia Snow House, where she moved five years ago when she reluctantly gave up independent living in Jamaica Plain.

She never gave up walking, even with her walker, a key, she said, to her longevity.

Ms. Boylan passed on her love of learning and her zest for life to generations of Boston elementary school children, often enlivening her lessons with real-life adventure stories of traveling on cargo ships to South America and Asia or twice driving her Model T Ford across country.

“Auntie E was an amazing person who could make people and places come alive through her stories,’’ Shea-Davies said. “She had so many adventures in her life and a fantastic memory, coupled with animated description.’’

“When I lived in Boston in 2001 and 2002,’’ she added, “I spent every Sunday night at Auntie E’s house. She would start dinner preparations, and I would make her daily martini - to her precise specifications, five parts gin, one part vermouth - and we would spend the evening talking about everything from comparing her childhood and mine to current events.’’

She was a diminutive woman with “sparkly blue eyes who wore contact lenses from the day they became available,’’ said Myriam Shea of Dilbeek, Belgium, the wife of Ms. Boylan’s nephew, Dennis Shea. “She was a very stylish and trendy woman for her time. If anyone put her in sneakers, she said she ‘would drop dead.’ She was quick-witted, with a keen power of observation, and nothing could get past her.’’

Marie Louise Boylan was born into a family of modest means in the Egleston Square section of Boston in 1906. Her father was a rope walker at Charlestown Navy Yard.

She graduated at 16 from Jamaica Plain High School and then attended Boston State Teachers College. She started teaching in 1925 at age 18 in elementary schools in Dorchester and Mattapan.

Dennis Shea was one of his aunt’s first-grade pupils at the Audubon School in Dorchester. “Many of the students at the time had come from the Holocaust,’’ he said, “and my aunt used to help both the students and their parents to acclimate. She helped them in getting services they needed.’’

Though kind and caring, Shea said, his aunt ran a tight ship in the classroom. “Her children didn’t run wild,’’ he said. “She preferred the old techniques of teaching and phonetics for reading.’’

To her pupils, she doled out “praise and encouragement,’’ Myriam Shea said. “She believed in not slowing anyone down in their reading or learning.’’

“Marie had a special way of reaching children,’’ said Ellen Savage of Quincy, a cousin and former teacher. “She understood them and how they want to succeed and always brought out the best in them.’’

After teaching, Ms. Boylan served as principal for about 10 years of what is now the Dever School at Columbia Point. Then, she became supervisor for elementary education, retiring from the school system 1976.

She encouraged her students to never stop learning and followed her own advice. While teaching, she took classes, receiving a bachelor’s degree in education in 1950 and a master’s in 1952, both from Boston University.

After she left the school system and was supervising new teachers, she told Judy Dovev, marketing supervisor at Sophia Snow House, “she knew the teacher would be nervous having her watch from the back of the room, so would offer to teach the class herself. She assessed the teacher by the academic level of the children.’’

Ms. Boylan never married. In 2007, she told the Roslindale Transcript that when she started teaching in 1925, “if you married, you had to resign, and the men had nothing to offer and couldn’t support you.’’ Her first teaching job paid $98 a month.

Free from family duties, she traveled the world with zest. Shea-Davies said her Auntie E “twice drove across the US in a Model T Ford, once taking the northern route and, on the second trip, the southern route, before selling the car in San Francisco and taking a cargo ship down through the Panama Canal and back up to the East Coast.’’

Years after World War I, Ms. Boylan told the Roslindale Transcript in 2007, she “cruised around South America on a Grace Line freighter.’’ She once took her nephew with her.

She stopped driving at 97, said Myriam Shea, never once having had an accident.

She remained a lifelong fan of the Red Sox, watched the Patriots, and told the Transcript that “basketball isn’t what it used to be when you go back to the Larry Bird days.’’

In December, Ms. Boylan told the West Roxbury Transcript that her lifelong walking habit got started because her family did not have a car until she was 12.

She missed teaching and recently confided to Myriam Shea: “You know, if they would take me, I would love to go back and teach. They wouldn’t even have to pay me.’’

A memorial Mass will be held at 10 a.m. Nov. 7 at Holy Name Church, West Roxbury.