`Madre Maxine' Is A Heroine To Eugene's Latino Families

EUGENE, Ore. - It's a fall afternoon at Whiteaker School in Eugene, the city's poorest elementary school, and Maxine Proskurowski is on the telephone, talking in rapid Spanish, while she measures a shy teen-age girl for a new hand-me-down winter coat.

"Maxine de la escuela," she introduces herself into the phone - Maxine from school - as she stretches the tape measure along the girl's back. "Stand up straight!" she says to the girl, an immigrant from El Salvador.

School has been out for an hour, but underfoot in Maxine's office are half a dozen small, dark-haired children, playing on the office computer, drawing pictures, blowing up latex gloves into balloons, chattering in Spanish, pulling at her sleeve for attention.

Three of them are regulars, here every day after school because they are homeless; they'll stay until their mother gets off work and picks them up in the car where they'll sleep tonight.

A young Hispanic woman comes to the office door with her preschool daughter, who is suffering from an ear infection and massive tooth decay. Off the phone now, Maxine gushes hello as if greeting a VIP at a cocktail party, turns to hand the older girl a coat to try on, then rummages in the refrigerator for a bottle of pink antibiotic for the youngster.

"Look at this girl's teeth," she says, gently opening the little girl's mouth to show a row of rotten stubs where baby teeth should be. "We'll have to find a dentist for her."

Whirlwind of compassion

Proskurowski, a wiry, quietly energetic woman of 49, is officially the school nurse at Whiteaker.

Unofficially, though, she is a whirlwind of round-the-clock, practical compassion for the Hispanic immigrants and other poor families who populate the school's neighborhood.

In her seven years at Whiteaker, she has redefined the job of school nurse past all recognition. Need shoes for your children? Talk to Maxine. Need someone to help file your taxes? Talk to Maxine. Mothers without a Christmas tree for their children, fathers who need jobs, despondent new residents wondering where their family's next meal might come from: They all find their way to Maxine.

"If there were an election in the Latino community tomorrow for some kind of representative, among the Latino leaders the least person known would be Maxine," says Jayme Vasconcellos, executive director of Eugene's Centro LatinoAmericano and a big fan of Proskurowski's. "But if you went out to the grassroots, she would be a very, very difficult person to beat. She probably has more contact on a day-to-day basis with the folks in the Latino community than anyone in Eugene."

"She is La Madre," says Nami Bolton, special projects coordinator for the school district. "She is Madre Teresa to the Latino community."

One-woman cultural melting pot

Not bad accolades for a blue-eyed, blond-haired woman with Swedish blood in her veins, a wealthy upbringing and an elite education on her resume.

Proskurowski is a one-woman cultural melting pot. Born in Mexico City to a third-generation expatriate American family, she grew up in Mexico, was educated in the United States and later studied in Sweden, where she met a Polish computer scientist who is now her husband. They were married in a Jewish ceremony at the Stockholm synagogue.

On any given day, says Whiteaker Principal Don Jackson, two-thirds of the calls to the school switchboard - which serves a staff of 42 - may be for Proskurowski. "They may not speak a word of English," the principal says. "But they know one word: Maxine."

Six years ago, Alex Rodriguez, who had just moved to Eugene from El Salvador, brought his Mexican-born wife and children here to join him. The beginning months were tough, says Rodriguez, who is now 34. Neither he nor his wife knew English; they had a hard time even figuring out how to get their kids into school, much less find work or housing.

"Then someone told me about Maxine," he says. "She was the only woman we found at the school who could speak Spanish. She helped me so many times, in everything."

On the first day of school, Rodriguez says, Proskurowski gave the family clothes and shoes for the children. She helped them fill out mysterious paperwork he recalls only as "applications - all kinds of applications."

And when the family was about to be evicted from their Jefferson Street apartment - "There were too many families living in it," he says - Proskurowski intervened with the landlord.

The year before last, with Rodriguez now working a steady job, the family bought its own home, with Proskurowski's help, of course.

"She is the best people I know in this country," Rodriguez says. "I never know anybody like her."

Around the Eugene School District, Proskurowski is known for bending rules, misinterpreting them or flat-out ignoring them in an effort to get things done. "She doesn't let regulations - let's say `standard procedures' - get in the way of creative solutions," says Abby Lane, head of the English as a second language program for the school district. "She is always thinking, `Who can I call?'