Linda Markee receives humanitarian award.

Duke University School of Nursing has selected Linda M. Markee, BSN’63, to receive the 2011 Humanitarian Award. Markee is trustee, founding board member, and secretary of Haiti Foundation of Hope (HFH). She will receive the award during a ceremony on Friday, April 8, 2011, from 10:00 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. in the School of Nursing Auditorium.

“Linda’s organizational and leadership skills, her compassion for the Haitian people, and her unwavering service to them exemplify Duke University School of Nursing’s commitment to eliminate health disparities,” said Dean Catherine L. Gilliss, DNSc, RN, FAAN, Helene Fuld Health Trust Professor of Nursing and Vice Chancellor for Nursing Affairs.

In 1993 Markee took her first trip to Haiti as a medical aide and team photographer with Haiti Medical Teams, a short-term medical group from Yakima, Washington. She took similar trips the following three years and in 1997 moved with her husband to Léogane, Haiti, to work as a Presbyterian missionary. After returning to the U.S. in 1999, they led five short-term medical teams to Terre Blanche, a rural, impoverished, and underserved area in remote northern Haiti. In 2005 they founded the Haiti Foundation of Hope (HFH) to support the establishment of a permanent medical presence in that area and in 2007 opened the Clinic of Hope with a full-time Haitian staff.