In her decades at Arbroath’s Timmergreens Primary School, Joyce Kerr taught and influenced the lives of hundreds of pupils.
She was a teacher at the school for her entire career, from the mid 1970s until she retired in 1998.
Her daughter, Shirley, said a treasured possession of her mother’s was a book of memories and photographs her pupils presented to her when she retired.
Joyce, who has died aged 83, lived in Monifieth for much of her adult life.
She was born in Dundee, the daughter of Janetta and Harry Greig.
Education
Joyce began her education at Rockwell Primary School in the city before moving up to Morgan Academy.
At the age of 16 she left school to work in the offices of the gas board.
It was there she met her future husband, Harry Kerr, who was a gas board joiner.
The couple married at St Mary’s Church, Dundee, in 1958 and went on to have two of a family, Shirley and Gregor.
Harry later left the gas board to train as a teacher and went on to teach technical education at Kirkton High School in Dundee and Kingsway technical college.
The couple’s first home was at Dallfield Walk, Dundee, before a move to Monifieth in 1966.
In the early 1970s, Joyce decided to follow Harry into teaching.
She trained for three years at college in the City of Discovery before joining the staff at Timmergreens.
Love of teaching
Shirley said it was a job her mother loved and, over the years, she got the opportunity to teach kids in all the year groups.
In retirement, Joyce and Harry travelled extensively around Europe including to Portugal and Lake Garda.
Their last holiday before Harry died three years ago was to Krakow in Poland, where they visited the Auschwitz death camp, which they both found very moving.
Joyce played badminton in retirement, took French lessons and had a wide circle of lunch friends.
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