From the Massachusetts Nurse Newsletter
November/December 2010 Edition
Ann M. Curley, Bridgewater resident and former Brockton Hospital nurse, died peacefully of lung cancer on Oct. 20, after a lifetime of service to family and community. Beloved wife of 40 years to Professor Thomas M. Curley of Bridgewater State University, she took great pride in her three fine children, Jonathan of Jersey City, N.J., Geoffrey of Brooklyn, N.Y. and Jessica (Curley) Beauchamp of Bridgewater. Also survived by many nieces and nephews, as well as her beloved brothers, Robert Rowan of Cotuit and Peter Rowan of Tampa, Fla. The daughter of the late Frank Rowan of Boston and Mary (O’Toole) Rowan of County Galway, Ireland, Mrs. Curley was born in Brookline on July 13, 1946. Having attended Mount St. Joseph Academy in Brighton, she enrolled at Cambridge Memorial and Melrose-Wakefield Hospitals to become a registered nurse in 1967. Following service at Mass General, she worked at Yonkers General Hospital in New York and Fairfax Hospital in Virginia but spent most of her successful career at the Brockton Hospital. A masterful emergency room nurse there for 20 years, she strove courageously for quality health care in her daily duties and on the picket line during a four-month strike at Brockton against mandatory overtime and understaffed conditions. Her compassionate curiosity about human diversity made her travel around the world, from China, India and Australia to Europe, Egypt and the Mideast. An elegant hard-working woman who dedicated her life to the care of others and to the support of her husband and children, she was voted the supreme professional honor of Employee of the Year at the Brockton Hospital in 2003. In her professional and private life, she fulfilled the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope.”
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