Board chair named Humanitarian of the Year |
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Monday, 06 April 2009 01:00 |
NAPLES, Fla.—St. Ursula Academy’s board chair and her husband have been named Humanitarians of the Year by Hodges University in Naples, Fla.
Christine Flynn, a Toledo native, and husband, Terry, originally of Green Bay, have been permanent residents of Naples since 1996. Mrs. Flynn graduated from St. Ursula Academy (SUA) in 1960. Some 40 years later, she joined St. Ursula’s Board of Trustees, becoming chair in 2007.
Mrs. Flynn’s passion for assisting women is a major component of the humanitarian efforts behind the award. In addition to serving as SUA’s board chair in Toledo, she established the Christine Flynn Fund in Florida to assist women and girls, discovering later the primary need for help was among elderly women. Collier County, where Mrs. Flynn and her husband live, has “an enormous number of older people who don’t know how to access social service resources,” according to Mrs. Flynn, so the fund’s “initial thrust has to find out what the elderly need and help them to get the services they need.”
She and her husband have also established the Terrence and Christine Flynn Scholarship Fund at Hodges University to assist returning service men and women in starting or completing their college educations.
Traveling to Toledo every other month for board meetings is important to Mrs. Flynn, who says that St. Ursula Academy is “in her blood.” She is a third-generation St. Ursula graduate and was especially close to her grandmother, whose aunt, an Ursuline nun, worked with Native Americans in Montana.
As board chair, Mrs. Flynn feels if there were anything she could do “that would make SUA even better than it is — if that is possible,” she would want to do it.
Her “burning desire” is to help St. Ursula Academy meet the challenges of a future marked by “changing demographics” in the Toledo area. “I know it’s a cliché, but as board chair I want to ‘think outside the box’ to make sure that we ‘look for what is best for St. Ursula.’ ”
“I hope to strive with others to continue the dream of providing quality education and religious values to Toledo’s young women,” she stated. “St. Ursula is the finest girls’ high school in Toledo.”
The Flynns are the 12th recipients of the annual Humanitarian Award. Hodges University is a small, private educational institution serving southwest Florida. Approximately 2,100 students attend the college, 70 percent of whom are women.
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Last Updated on Thursday, 04 June 2009 09:09 |
