Monday, December 14, 2015
Kathy was my right hand for 30 years, serving as the Secretary and Co-ordinator of McMaster's Introductory Psychology courses. She was efficient, energetic, dedicated, and unfailingly calm, polite, helpful, and even nurturing, to thousands of students and teaching assistants over those years. She always gave everyone who needed her help her full attention, and all the support and assistance she could offer.
Students would come back years after taking the course to visit with her, remembering and thanking her for the support and kindnesses she had bestowed on them.
She forged a bond with the undergraduate teaching assistants that was nothing short of remarkable. She guided and mentored hundreds of them over the years, and remembered all of them by name. I remember one TA, coming back after more than a decade away, saying to me before he went to visit Kathy "I'm sure she won't remember me after all these years!" But as he walking down the hall toward her office she emerged, saw him - 40 feet away - and immediately said "Jim! Great to see you again"
And that is not even to mention the hundreds of times she kept me on track, arranged my schedules, and managed tasks I never thought she could complete.
She was in every way a very special person, and all of us who knew her will miss her terribly.
