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Albuquerque teachers are grieving for two of their own, two of their best, who died in a fiery crash near Vaughn.

"They were two amazing teachers," La Cueva High School teacher Pat Graff said of colleagues Alice Brice and Joyce Briscoe.

Brice and Briscoe were coming home to Albuquerque from a book-selling trip in eastern New Mexico when their car was crushed and burned in a collision with a semitrailer rig Wednesday evening.

Both were retired from Albuquerque Public Schools, with 57 years of service between them.

They were best friends, "very bright, very intellectual, very demanding and very superb teachers," said friend Pat Renken, who worked with them at La Cueva.

"These two people were the finest of the finest," Renken said.

Briscoe, the national Disney Teacher of the Year for 1989-90, taught history, English and social studies at La Cueva before moving to Sandia High School, where she retired in 2002. She was 56.

"She was on the original crew that opened La Cueva," Graff said.

When she received the Disney award, Briscoe was quoted as saying her goal was to teach her students self-reliance.

"I want to give them the confidence to reason out a question to a valid, not prejudicial, conclusion. I want them to be the best that America has.

"I try to teach every student as if he or she were going to be on the cover of Time for curing cancer or win the Nobel Prize for literature," she said.

Brice, who chaired La Cueva's English department for years and was New Mexico's English Teacher of the Year in 1999, retired in July 1999 after 32 years in the district.

Among her awards was recognition from Brigham Young University students who voted her "the most influential teacher in their lives," Renken said.

In her retirement, Brice was working for a publisher selling textbooks to schools all over the state, Graff said. Briscoe liked to travel with her.

Ellen Bernstein, president of the Albuquerque Teachers Federation, said Brice and Briscoe were federation representatives and active in union issues.

"They were both exceptional women and exceptional teachers," Bernstein said.

Briscoe served on a national board for professional teaching standards that promotes excellence among educators, Bernstein said.

Briscoe was also a volunteer for the ACLU, which recognized her as volunteer of the year in 2005.

"She cared deeply about teaching and the kids she taught," Bernstein said.

According to State Police, the women were traveling west on U.S. 60 in a passenger car that collided with a northeastbound semitrailer. The car did not stop at a traffic sign, police said.

The passenger car was trapped under the trailer and the women died in the fire, police said.

Services have not been announced.