The Heart of Our Community
Sometimes, you need a bandage. Or an ice pack. Or a cough drop. Or just a place to sit quietly until whatever hurts—a scraped knee, a bruised ego, a stomach laid low by last period’s physics test—feels better. But sooner or later, you are definitely going to need Nurse Maureen Linehan.
It is nearly impossible to overstate the significance of Maureen’s influence on Browning over the past 30 years. School nurses are a mighty bunch, and all pass a threshold of technical skill and professional expertise, but Maureen’s clinical proficiency is simply on another level; indeed, she has an encyclopedic understanding of how to treat bruises and breaks, cuts and concussions, aches and abrasions. As great as she is with bloody noses and epipens, however, Maureen’s most profound contributions to Browning have been less material, more spiritual. In dozens upon dozens of ways, she has been the heart and conscience of our school community—and the one that we all look to when we need to know that things will be all right.
During the school day, Maureen’s first-floor office is like LaGuardia Airport the day before Thanksgiving, with folks rushing in and out, all with a specific set of hopes, concerns, and stories they want to share. Lower School boys stop by on their way back from the bathroom, because they know Ms. Linehan will always give them a big smile and reassurance that things (be it last week’s black eye or tomorrow’s lunch) will get better. Older students duck their head in under the auspices of physical malady, but really to get guidance on relationships, to worry about the wellbeing of a family member, or to relay the happy tale of a recent artistic or athletic triumph to the Browning adult they love most. For faculty and staff, Maureen’s is the place to go for Tylenol and second opinions and reminders that both students and school administrators have always been works in progress. On the rare moments when Maureen is alone in her office, she is likely on the phone, giving medical guidance to a concerned parent, consulting with a fellow nurse, or letting an alumnus know that yes, she’d be happy to give him some advice if he stopped by later in the week. On a daily basis, Nurse Linehan’s room is a hum of energy and appeal and relief that begins before the Red Doors open, and concludes after the last student has gone home for the evening.
And as central as Maureen has been to the wellbeing of Browning for three decades, she has been utterly indispensable over the past two years. The pandemic thrust so many front-line workers into impossibly difficult roles, and it was certainly the same for Nurse Linehan, as she was asked to become functionally expert in digital health screening, contact tracing, interpreting epidemiological data, social distancing, and a host of other matters that were never properly the ambit of a school nurse. Maureen could have understandably suggested that someone on the back end of their career not be tasked with such things, but she did not; instead, she gave herself to learning with and from medical experts, to educating colleagues and boys and families, and to being present, day after day, year-round, as she helped lead us through the worst public health crisis our city had seen in a century. It was selfless, grinding, unanticipated work, and I dare not imagine where we would have been without her. As always, we looked to Maureen, and as always, she let us know that things would be all right.
No one is all things to all people, but in the Browning world, Maureen Linehan comes awfully close. For 30 years, she has been a nurse, a teacher, an advisor, a leader, a friend, and—for me, and for so many others—a hero.