Hundreds of mourners stood in a misting rain last night to say goodbye to Asa Yamashita, the popular Wai'anae High School teacher who was stabbed to death Feb. 27 as she sat eating saimin at an 'Ewa shopping center.

With 2 1/2 hours to go before the service began, a line of people stretched out of two chapels at Nu'uanu Memorial Park and Mortuary and wound along Nu'uanu Avenue as music played and images of Yamashita's life flashed on large screens inside and outside the chapels.

In all, a standing-room-only crowd of more than 1,200 people came to honor Yamashita, a 43-year-old mother of two adopted daughters who inspired both students and faculty to read for the sheer pleasure of it.

"It's a testament to the kind of person Asa was ... just a warm, loving person," said Kat Muranaka, who works in the Wai'anae High School office and is one of Yamashita's best friends. "She made friends with everyone. What makes Asa so special is her sense of humor and love for life and compassion and dedication for what she did."

There was no mention at the funeral of the violent way in which Yamashita died as she waited for her husband, Bryan, to pick her up at Ewa Town Center. And there was certainly no reference to the man accused of repeatedly stabbing her, Tittleman Fauatea, 25, who once lived a few blocks from the strip mall and has been charged with second-degree murder in the attack.

"Today is really a time of celebration and joy ... and a time of healing and love," pastor Eric Ebisu of Pearl City Community Church told those who had gathered.

At the request of Asa and Bryan's youngest daughter, Tori, who turned 5 on Monday, the mourners sang "Jesus Loves Me" and its verse of "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong, they are weak, but He is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me ..."

One of Bryan Yamashita's older brothers, the Rev. Boyden Yamashita, said, "We must come to accept that this was Asa's time to go home to the Lord. ... Let there not be anger or malice of bitterness in our hearts."

The Rev. Yamashita told those gathered that Bryan "wants to remove bitterness and replace it with the love of God."

Asa Yamashita's official title was "reading strategies coach" at Wai'anae High but students knew her as "The Book Lady" who took the time to discover what interested them, then hunted down everything from novels to surfing magazines to comic books to get them to learn to love to read.

"From an early age, Asa loved reading," her other brother-in-law, Byrnes Yamashita, said in his eulogy.

After she had read everything in the house, young Asa then began reading the encyclopedia, he said.

Byrnes joked that Bryan loved his wife's appetite for reading because it meant that she knew almost everything and he could turn to her as a resource.

"Before there was Google, there was Asa," Byrnes said.

Even though she stood only 4 feet 9, Asa was the student band president at Farrington High School and carried heavy percussion instruments on the football field during summer band practices, Byrnes said.

Asa graduated from Farrington in 1983, then graduated cum laude from Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., in 1987.

After studying abroad at Oxford University in England, Asa returned home to get her teaching certificate from the University of Hawai'i in 1987 and briefly taught at Farrington. She had moved on to teach at Kamehameha Schools in 1990 and was helping with Farrington's graduation when she met Bryan, a young Farrington social studies teacher.

"Meeting Asa was like meeting a firecracker," Byrnes said.

Before Kamehameha Schools, Asa had taught at Wai'anae and returned in 1997 to teach 10th-grade English and became Waianae's school's literacy coordinator in 2002, Byrnes said.

It was the same year that she and Bryan traveled to China to adopt Katie, then later returned in 2005 with Katie to adopt Tori.

From the time that Asa got home each day until she got the girls off to school, Byrnes said, "Asa was all mommy."

She shared her passion for reading with the girls, Byrnes said, and now reading is Katie's favorite pastime.

He asked the mourners to honor Asa's memory and "pick up a book and read. ... Read to learn something, read to enjoy. ... Just maybe you're reading for a better world."