Today's Monday Mission Update is dedicated to Linda Green, the longtime Site Manager of the Y’s Before and After School Enrichment program at Catonsville Elementary. Linda passed away last Thursday and we join her family, friends and the many children and families she was so dedicated to in mourning her loss. Linda was 58 years old and left behind her daughter Nia Jones (who has also worked and consulted for us) and husband Darryl Green, along with an entire community of enthusiastic fans.
To know Linda was to love and cherish her. She was an ordained Deacon in her church, First Mount Olive Baptist Church, and a lifelong resident of Baltimore City. A Y associate for the past eight years, Linda was so entrenched in Y work that some of her colleagues simply assumed that she worked with us for decades. Known for her ability to mentor and coach others, Linda could be counted on to help guide new associates as well as to develop several of her direct reports who, with her leadership, went on to become Site Managers themselves.
Linda was relentless in her commitment to quality and took great care in assuring an exceptional experience for the students and families she served. She was one of those super-talented leaders who understood and practiced the need to focus both on the big picture as well as the small details. The tremendous care and passion she poured into her work was seen in both the empirical data we use to measure and track quality, and in the much more difficult to earn deep love that the children and families she touched had for her. Indeed, it's fair to say that Linda became a maternal figure to everyone in her path: her students, their parents, her direct reports, her colleagues, her supervisors, and our school partners. They all looked to her for support, guidance, and empathy. As an indication of both her strong sense of duty as well as how deeply loved she was, when Linda briefly accepted an assignment at a Y school site closer to her home, her Catonsville Elementary students and their parents protested and so did Linda! She insisted on returning to Catonsville Elementary even though it required riding the MTA at 4:30 am just to be on site to open her program for families early every morning!
We're told that her eight-year-old grandson Jackson was the apple of her eye and, though she wore many hats, being Jackson’s “Nana” was her favorite.
We will miss "Ms. Linda," as she was known. We’ve lost a very special human being whose memory will be long cherished.
All the best,
John
John K. Hoey
President & CEO
The Y in Central Maryland