After coming out of retirement to train future nurses, Iris Meda, 70, dies of COVID-19

Update 7:40 PM: This story has been updated to include comments from the director of Anna ISD.

Iris Meda had big plans for retirement after more than three decades as a nurse.

Meda was going on a trip to visit her siblings in South Carolina. She was going to team up with her daughter to write a book. She was going to ride – up and down – in a convertible for the first time.

But when the coronavirus pandemic struck, just weeks after her retirement, she put her plans on hold. She signed up to teach at Collin College, wishing to use her nursing experience to train the next generation of essential healthcare workers.

It was while teaching, her family believes, that Meda, 70, contracted COVID-19. She died of complications from the disease on November 14.

Meda weighed the risk of going to school each day against the reward of helping strengthen the nursing ranks, said daughter Selene Meda-Schlamel.

“I think it wasn’t just because she believed in what she was doing, but she was so happy to be there and so happy to educate the students,” Meda-Schlamel said. “She was always serving someone.”

Meda was born in South Carolina in 1950 and grew up caring for her younger siblings from a young age, sparking a passion for custody. Her family was so poor, her daughter recalls, that Meda didn’t realize until she got married that people were supposed to use their own towels.

After dropping out of high school, Meda later returned to get her GED in New York City, followed by an associate’s degree from Bronx Community College and later a nursing degree.

She has deployed her skills in hospitals, nursing homes and correctional facilities. The family story goes that Meda was so kind to the inmates on Rikers Island that they applauded her when she quit her job and moved to Texas in 1992.

“Coming so far in her career and becoming an educator now was the epitome of the American dream,” said Meda-Schlamel.

Meda initially thought she would teach all of her students online. So it was a surprise when we expected her to show up for work in person this fall.

She was wearing her glasses and N95 mask, and tried to get away from the students in her class, her daughter said. Despite the added pressure, she loved teaching them the basics of nursing and making them laugh during class. She kept an eye out for those who seemed in trouble.

“She was looking for students who needed that extra help because she had been that student at some point,” her daughter said.

She also paid close attention to how her students were feeling. On October 2, she took note of a double credit student at Anna High School who was sneezing and coughing. She learned that the student tested positive for the virus a week later, according to an email from the college president.

Meda started to feel sick too, so she started a detailed diary of how she felt each day. Fever, body aches, chills.

A test confirmed the family’s fears: Meda had the virus.

Meda’s death has ignited anger and fear among some professors and staff at Collin College.

For weeks, they’ve been wondering why the school doesn’t have a public COVID-19 dashboard like other colleges and universities to track cases in the community.

Some also criticized District President H. Neil Matkin for rejecting the virus and for the way he announced Meda’s death.

He emailed college administrators in August – days before Meda returned to the job market – stating that “the effects of this pandemic have been totally disproportionate in our country and reported with unfortunate sensationalism.

And after Meda’s death, Inside Higher Ed reported, Matkin broke the news in the 22nd paragraph of an email with the subject line “College Update & Happy Thanksgiving!” He did not include Meda’s name, later saying it was because he did not yet have the family’s permission to do so.

The initial email landed in faculty inboxes as several dozen were logged into Zoom for a faculty council meeting. Immediately, they began to try to find out which of their colleagues had died.

“It was scary and shocking to just be, in this flippant way, said that a faculty member has passed away,” history professor Lora Burnett said.

A student who attended the Collin College campus in Allen died last month after falling ill with the virus, KERA News reported.

A college spokesperson did not respond to a list of questions about how the virus has been treated on Collin campuses.

He made a statement on behalf of Matkin saying he offers his condolences to the Meda family and that the college is “sincerely grateful for its service to our students.”

It was difficult for Meda to speak from her hospital bed, so instead she texted her daughter.

One thing that worried her: Were the other students in her class in quarantine? Did they also get sick?

Superintendent Anna ISD Michael Comeaux said the school was monitoring Meda’s class and no other students were showing symptoms. They haven’t sent any students home, he said, except for the original teenager who tested positive.

The others, Comeaux said, “were not considered to be in close contact because they were wearing masks.” The students were sometimes within six feet of each other due to the work involved in the lesson.

Meda also texted her daughter about other things. At first, she wrote to say that she was bored sitting in the hospital bed all day. Meda-Schlamel therefore sent in his podcast recommendations.

She later texted to make sure Meda-Schlamel remembered to thank the health workers who were caring for her. A few days before Meda’s intubation, she reminded her daughter to take a thank you card for her nurse.

As Meda-Schlamel reflects on her mother’s life, what is most evident is how much she cared about others. Before she died, she left her daughter a card and a blank check.

“You… will have a wonderful life to come,” Meda wrote to her daughter.

Now, as Meda-Schlamel examines her mother’s documents, she finds more evidence of this spirit. It turns out, she said, that Meda was dealing with a friend’s car payments as they got over the economic toll of the pandemic.

“I just want everyone to know that her legacy will live on after her,” Meda-Schlamel said. “This heritage of helping each other, of teaching each other, of unconditional love and forgiveness.”

Shortly before her death, Meda and a friend recorded a video of themselves singing and dancing with Sam Cooke. Meda smiles at the camera and laughs.

“Now I look at her and I cry,” says her friend Rehna Troutt.

Troutt is one of the people behind a GoFundMe page to raise money for family hospital bills and funeral expenses. He has already raised over $ 18,000.

Any remaining funds will be used to start a scholarship in honor of Meda.

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