Mara Flanagan was one of the greatest students to ever grace Chatham University. Her warm smile and gentle voice would console you through any final or fear. Mara’s kindness and generosity reached everyone she encountered. She was always full of love and friendship for anyone in need of it.
I first met Mara through Her Campus. She not only ran it, but embodied it: sisterhood, optimism, and her perfect HC pink lipstick. She was the CC of Her Campus Chatham before me—my predecessor, mentor, and friend. I was in charge of the newspaper at the time and wanted to partner on workshops for our writers. Mara and I exhausted ourselves to put together a workshop on writing followed by a panel of successful Pittsburgh writers in fields ranging from poetry to magazine writing to newspaper journalists. Afterwards we were drained, but so happy and proud. I was just a sophomore and didn’t know anything about planning events on campus. I couldn’t have made any of that possible without her. I pitched her an idea, and she made my dream a reality.
When my grandfather passed away, even though she was dealing with her own stress, Mara reached out to me, comforted me, and even surprised me with cookies in my mailbox. She was famous for this—her selfless surprise gifts for those who needed them. She should have gotten paid by Chatham for the amount of counseling she provided for others.
I could go on and on with instances of her good heart. She changed the life of everyone she met, for the better.
There will never be another Mara. There will never be another human as caring and bighearted as her, or a writer as gifted and charismatic as her. Worst of all is the fact that she was taken from us so soon, so we can never know her full potential and all of the things she could have achieved. All we can hope is that she succeeded in as many of her dreams as possible in the short time she was with us, and that now she is in a better place.
We love you Mara. And we will never forget you.
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