Honoring Our Colleagues Lost to COVID-19: A Salute to VNSNY Partners in Care Home Health Aide Lindonna Connaught

The heroism shown by the staff of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York in tremendously challenging times is legendary. From the influenza epidemic of 1918 and the polio outbreaks of the mid-20th century, to the emergence of AIDS in the 1980s and the devastation of the 9/11 attacks and Superstorm Sandy, VNSNY’s courageous women and men have always been there to provide care and comfort to New Yorkers in troubled times, despite the risk to themselves.

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. Over the past two months, we have been working tirelessly and with unsurpassed determination under incredibly difficult circumstances so that our patients and plan members can continue to receive the care they need. Many of our colleagues have been stricken with COVID-19 themselves. Thankfully, most of them have recovered and many have even returned to work. Sadly and tragically, however, eight of our coworkers have died. They include six home health aides with Partners in Care, a physical therapist with VNSNY Home Care, and a social worker with VNSNY Hospice.

“These VNSNY heroes dedicated their lives to caring for others, and their contributions will never be forgotten,” says VNSNY President and CEO Marki Flannery. “We will remember them, honor them, and celebrate their lives.”

Lindonna Connaught

Lindonna Connaught, a Partners in Care Home Health Aide in Brooklyn and Manhattan, was with VNSNY for three years. “Lindonna was really lovable—a very calm person, who could still deal with the very tough cookies out there!” says Debra Barnes, her HHA Supervisor. “You could always call her to work, at any moment… and her patients never wanted her to leave!”

For much of Lindonna’s time at Partners in Care, she had cared for an elderly woman with significant needs, notes Debra. “Whenever I spoke with Lindonna, no matter what difficulties there might have been with her client, she always had a good word to say. She was just a wonderful lady, and we had a very good rapport. I spoke with her by phone just three days before she died. To hear the news that she had passed away was devastating.”

“My mother was very kind and outgoing,” adds her oldest son Bradley, who is currently serving in the U.S. Army. “She really enjoyed her job, and really cared about the people she was working with. She was friendly with everyone and always wanted to help—she would give people advice, encouragement, money… anything she had to offer.”

“Lindonna was a people person, and very family-oriented,” says her mother, Leonie. “She cared a great deal about her kids and, of course, her mother. She was always concerned for others. I’ll give you an example: On the day when she first became ill, just eight days before she passed away, she was coming home on the train and she wasn’t feeling well. But she also knew that I had not been feeling well the last couple of days. When she got out of the train, a block from where we live, she saw an ambulance driving toward our building. As sick as she was, she began running after it, thinking it might be coming for me.”

That was the type of person Lindonna was, her mother explains. “She loved everybody, and would help anybody that she could. In her work, everybody wanted only her. She also loved to travel. Everywhere she went, people meeting her would just get attached to her. It’s so sad that she is gone.”

Lindonna lived in Brooklyn, having come to the U.S. from Grenada with her children. She is survived by her mother, Josephine “Leonie” Isaac, her sons, Bradley, Lyndon and Christian Connaught, and her daughter Chryslyn Connaught.

If you would like to send a condolence message or other acknowledgement to Lindonna’s family, please email Leslie Dorman, Director, Human Resources, at [email protected]. If you would like to submit a special story or remembrance about Lindonna, please send it using the Contact Us page on Frontline. We will post these responses as they come in.