Oglesby teacher has spent nearly six decades at Holy Family School, starting at age 4

Lynn Quick first walked into Holy Family School when she was 4 – parents then could enroll their kindergartners before age 5 – and she’s still at the Oglesby school more than 60 years later.

Quick, 64, is an Oglesby native who settled on a teaching career even before she graduated from Holy Family, thanks mainly to an always-smiling Felician sister who inspired her to teach, if not to take up the habit herself.

Quick loved Holy Family School as a child and, except for her years in high school and at college, she’s remained there most of six decades, with 43 years teaching.

“I’ve actually loved every single year I’ve ever taught,” Quick said. “I’ve never thought of going anywhere else.”

A love of Oglesby and its parish runs in the family. George and Marilyn Argubright were Oglesby natives who sent all four of their daughters (Lynn is second born) to Holy Family. When the Argubright girls were students, the Holy Family faculty was largely comprised of Felician sisters who weren’t above corporal punishment.

“Some of my favorite teachers were the sisters, and some of them were genuinely wonderful,” Quick said. “Some of them, yeah, you’d get a rap on the knuckles if you had sloppy handwriting or if you were turned around talking to someone.

“But at least for me, I didn’t see a lot of that.”

One of the nuns left a particularly lasting impression. Her seventh grade teacher, Sister Mary Andrene, was especially kind and “smiled every day, no matter what happened.”

“I remember saying to my mom at the end of seventh grade, ‘I’d love to be just like Sister Mary Andrene,’” Quick said. “If I could do what she does for us every day, I think I’d be happy for the rest of my life.

“Well, here I am still,” Quick said. “So I guess it was the right choice.”

I’ve had great teachers and you know they care, but with Lynn you know she individually cares about every single person in her class.”

—  Sammi Sarosinski, one of Lynn Quick's students

Sammi Sarosinski, of Oglesby, certainly thinks so. Sarosinski thought highly enough of Quick to approach her about serving as her daughter’s Confirmation sponsor, which Quick was happy to do.

“She was definitely one of my favorite teachers,” Sarosinski said. “I’ve had great teachers and you know they care, but with Lynn you know she individually cares about every single person in her class.”

Quick may have been influenced by a nun, but she said she never sensed a vocation to be a nun. That isn’t to say the Felicians didn’t try talking her into it. When Quick was 6, one of the nuns herded all the first graders – “God bless her, there were 41 of us” – onto a bus to Chicago for a discernment weekend to see if any of the kids had a calling.

That was Quick’s first time in Chicago and she loved every minute, but she never felt a summons then or in the sixth grade when she attended another discernment event.

(Instead, she had a vocation to marriage. Bill Quick was a fellow Oglesby native but they met on a Florida beach when a wave literally pushed her into her future husband. They have been married 33 years and have two grown children.)

Quick would finish her education outside the Catholic school system.

“I had very faithful parents,” said Quick, who was happy attending La Salle-Peru High School, “so it’s not as though she couldn’t teach me the things I’d be missing (at public school).”

After studying at Illinois Valley Community College and completing a bachelor’s degree at Northern Illinois University, she accepted a teaching position at Holy Family in the 1980-81 school year.

The nuns had first choice on which classes to teach, which relegated Quick to seventh grade. Quick took an instant liking to junior high students and was doubly pleased to get Sister Mary Andrene’s old classroom. One day Mary Andrene, now Mother Superior, walked in and immediately recognized the young woman at the blackboard.

“This is so familiar,” the nun marveled.

“I’m here because of you,” Quick replied. She said now, “It really was the greatest reunion.”

A nun at Holy Family soon became a rare sighting. As the professed sisters aged and retired, they were called back to the big-city convents.

“And then, eventually, there just weren’t any available and now we are all lay teachers,” Quick said.

Quick bounced back and forth between seventh and eighth grades, which suited her well. She’d never felt drawn into elementary or secondary education and felt a strong connection to the pre-teens.

“They are looking for answers about so many things,” Quick said. “They are very interested in who they are becoming, they’re very interested in their faith and they’re very interested in why they’re here.

“And it’s so important that there’s somebody who can address that for them.”

Her principal certainly is pleased. Jyll Jasiek said not only is Quick a skilled educator but also she’s a woman of faith who lives out her creed.

“She captures their attention not only with her teaching style but also her life stories,” Jasiek said. “Lynn lives her life and teaches through her faith every day.”

Quick in no way disavows that.

“I truly believe that if people are meant to be teachers, they are also meant to have a niche – a place in the educational framework that’s their comfort zone and where they contribute the most,” she said. “This is my niche.”

Although she’s closing in on retirement age, Quick has no immediate plans to call it a career.

“I know I’m coming back next year, and still very excited about coming back next year. And then? We’ll see.”