Rachel Entwistle is recalled as engaging

As a child, Rachel Entwistle often told her mother that she wanted to be a Supreme Court justice.

''Rachel always felt that life had to be fair," her mother, Priscilla Matterazzo of Carver, said yesterday.

But instead of going into the law, she became a teacher, and for two years after her graduation from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester in 2001, she taught English at St. Augustine's Catholic High School in Redditch, England.

''She loved it," her mother said. ''She became very involved with her students and in their lives. She always talked about 'her kids.' "

Nor did Mrs. Entwistle's students forget her. Many of them expressed their sorrow and love for her on a website after Rachel E. (Souza) Entwistle, 27, and her 9-month-old daughter, Lillian Rose, were found shot to death Jan. 22 in their Hopkinton home.

''Rachel was a very happy person," her mother said in a phone interview. ''She had worked hard, and her life was going in the direction she had hoped it would. She gave her best and expected the best from us. She never let us slide over things."

Brown-haired with sparkling green eyes, Mrs. Entwistle was the kind of person who ''would light up a room with her smile, her laughter, and her love of life," said Matterazzo. ''She was always thinking of ways to make other people happy," her mother said.

When Lillian Rose was born in England nine months ago, the baby added a new richness to the young mother's life. ''Rachel was absolutely thrilled with motherhood," said Matterazzo.

Lillian Rose was ''a very happy baby, a very good baby," she said.

Mrs. Entwistle was born in Kingston to Priscilla (Cooke) and Paul Souza. Her father died when she was a young girl. She always loved sports and was an excellent swimmer. Growing up, she was a summer lifeguard in Plymouth.

She attended Kingston schools where she was regarded as an outstanding student and a leader.

''Rachel led by example," said Richard Kelley, principal of Silver Lake Regional High School in Kingston. She ran track.

Richard Swanson, who was her teacher at Silver Lake and who now teaches at Duxbury High School, remembered her talking about becoming a lawyer and then a judge when she took his Advanced Placement course in US history. ''Rachel had genuine intellectual curiosity," he said. ''She was the kind of kid who loved learning. She wasn't just interested in getting good grades, but in understanding the material.

''She had a fascination with the past," he said. ''I recall her saying how it would have been interesting to have been alive at other points in our history. The quality of her writing in the papers she did for the class was excellent. Rachel had tremendous potential and a positive and upbeat personality to go along with her intellectual ability."

Swanson, who advised her as she considered heroic figures in American history for an independent study she was proposing for her sophomore year, recalled that she was particularly interested in the 19th-century Chief Justice John Marshall and Justice Thurgood Marshall. He called her a ''critical thinker."

Swanson wrote Mrs. Entwistle letters of recommendation as she applied to colleges and encouraged her to attend his alma mater, Holy Cross.

''She didn't want to memorize the names and dates, but she wanted to think critically about the information before her," he said. ''That is exceptional for high school students. That would make a teacher remember her years later."

After graduating from Silver Lake High in 1997, she enrolled at the College of the Holy Cross, ''the only school she wanted to go," her mother said. She majored in English and American studies and was active in athletics, the women's rowing team and the women's cross-country and track teams. At 5 feet tall, she was too short to manage an oar, her mother said, so she was coxswain on the shell.

When she spent her junior year at the University of York in York, England, Mrs. Entwistle was also coxswain on the university's rowing crew. While a student there, her mother said, she traveled around Europe, making friendships wherever she went.

Recently, her mother said, Mrs. Entwistle planned to use her swimming skills in volunteering with participants in the Special Olympics.

Mrs. Entwistle married Neil Entwistle, a native of England, in Plymouth in August 2003.

In addition to her mother and husband, she leaves her stepfather, Joseph Matterazzo; her brother, Jerome Souza; four stepbrothers, Joseph, Michael, Anthony, and Zachary Matterazzo; and two stepsisters, Marybeth and Erika Matterazzo.

A funeral Mass will be said for Mrs. Entwistle and Lillian Rose tomorrow at 11 a.m. in St. Peter's Catholic Church in Plymouth. Burial will be in Evergreen Cemetery in Kingston.

Globe correspondent Franci R. Ellement contributed to this obituary.