Aimo Teittinen; principal had ice cream store in summer

Aimo Teittinen, a former teacher and administrator in Haverhill and Weston schools who ran an ice cream store during the summers, died Friday at Salem Hospital, succumbing to a brain tumor. He was 90.

A tall man with a firm handshake, Mr. Teittinen was known to most as "Tate" and "seemed to have a very good rapport with the kids and the teachers," his wife, Helen, said yesterday.

A Fitchburg native, he grew up in Gardner.

For four years, Mr. Teittinen was a shop teacher in Haverhill at a time when that course of study was rapidly changing. By the time he moved to the Weston school system in 1939, he was no longer teaching just the fundamentals of woodworking and metal work; he was teaching students about industries, such as the automotive and printing fields, as a whole. What he taught, his wife said, "wasn't out of a book."

Taking three years off to serve in the Navy, Mr. Teittinen taught seamanship at the Midshipmen's School at Columbia University in New York and then worked for a time as an education and information officer in the Leyte Gulf in the Philippine Islands.

"He was a craftsman-type," his son David of Duxbury said yesterday.

When he returned to the Bay State, Mr. Teittinen became an assistant principal of Weston High School. He later became principal of Weston Junior High School.

He worked with contractors to make sure that the construction of Weston Middle School was on schedule and he successfully pushed for the school to implement a house system, whereby students were grouped into smaller clusters, each with a different set of administrators.

"He was very proud of that," his wife said.

Although he enjoyed working as an administrator, the job had at least one downside: he had to give up running the Cedar Hill Dairy Bar on North Avenue in Weston with a fellow teacher, which he did for 16 summers.

"They were doing it all: cooking burgers, scooping ice cream," his son said.

Before he spent summers scooping ice cream, the Fitchburg State College graduate took classes, earning his master's degree in education from the University of Michigan in the late 1930s, between school sessions.

"He loved teaching," his wife said.

As an administrator, Mr. Teittinen "liked a good result, but he was very fair with all of his work," his wife said. "He was always so full of fun and wit."

In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Teittinen leaves another son, Robert of Southington, Conn.; a daughter, Suzanne Teittinen Joyce of Old Lyme, Conn.; and six grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held Thursday at 2 p.m. in Weston United Methodist Church. Burial will be private in the Linwood Cemetery in Weston.