A Riverhead Middle School icon retired yesterday.
Most people can’t remember a time when Patricia Skura wasn’t in the middle school office, where she’d been a fixture since 1988. The beloved secretary bade farewell to coworkers and students at the middle school, where she worked for 27 of her 35 years of service. Prior to joining the middle school staff, she was a special education aide at Roanoke and Phillips Avenue elementary schools.
Skura was set to retire at the end of the school year, but had to leave early due to a medical procedure scheduled for today.
“Thank God, it’s not cancer,” the seven-time cancer survivor said. “Seven cancers are enough.”
Her battles against the dread disease gave Skura a new perspective on life “Every day is a blessing, a true gift,” she says. They also inspired her to help create Riverhead Relay for Life, a two-day fundraiser campout and relay for the American Cancer Society held on the district’s football field and track for several years during the 2000s. For five years Skura, appropriately, organized the survivors’ tent, where cancer survivors gathered for refreshments and respite.
She loves children. “Working for the district has always been all about the kids,” she said. When she first made the switch from teacher’s aide to secretary to the assistant principal in the middle school office, she missed terribly spending her days with children in the classroom. But she soon learned that she would still work very closely with kids in her new job. Skura’s warm and empathic personality quickly made her the go-to woman for kids needing a shoulder to lean on, a grown-up willing to listen to them and keep confidences.
Over the last 27 years, she worked for 17 assistant principals before moving to the guidance office. “But it’s always been all about the kids.”
Together with teacher Ed Tholl she started the Middle Masques, a middle school drama club that’s put on productions of Scrooge, Guys and Dolls and Grease, among others. She hopes to be able to continue working with the Middle Masques.
Skura said she’s looking forward to spending more time now with her three young grandchildren, Emma, 2, Ren, 7 mos. and Joey, 4 mos. She’d also like to do a little traveling and is planning trips to Disney and Puerto Rico.
But retirement is going to take some getting used to, she said. “Working for the district has been my life — for more than half my life.” Leaving “is very surreal to me,” she said. “Riverhead Middle School has been my second family.”
Nevertheless, Skura knows the time is right. “I have to work on improving my health,” she said.
Having beaten breast cancer, a tumor on her spine and several skin cancers, Skura describes herself as “a miracle.”
When she felt a breast lump and was sent for tests, three mammograms and two sonograms came back negative, she said. But she knew there was something wrong and persisted. She went to Dr. Richards in Mattituck. “He saved my life,” she said.
She urges everyone: “Know your body,” she said, emphasizing each word.
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