Paula Hollinger started her career taking vitals and calming families, not whipping votes and wrangling committees. The registered nurse who became a Democratic powerhouse in Annapolis died March 25 after a brief battle with leukemia. Over nearly 30 years in the Maryland General Assembly, she turned bedside experience into law - reshaping everything from school health and elder-care programs to the reproductive-rights statute that still defines Maryland politics.
Before she ever set foot in the State House, Hollinger worked in New York City emergency rooms, completed psychiatric training at White Plains Hospital, and graduated from the Mount Sinai School of Nursing. Early in her career, she even helped open an intensive-care unit, according to The Baltimore Banner. Those front-line years convinced her that the problems she saw at patients' bedsides were often fixable only by people writing the laws. The Banner notes she was born Dec. 30, 1940, and was 85 at the time of her death.
Legislating From the Bedside
Once elected, Hollinger brought a clinician's focus on detail to some of Annapolis' most contentious fights. She sponsored the 1990 push to write the Roe v. Wade decision into Maryland statute, a measure that survived an eight-day filibuster and was later ratified by voters in a 1992 referendum, according to Maryland Matters. That law became a touchstone for reproductive-rights advocates for decades and, observers say, helped Maryland weather later national rollbacks of abortion protections.
Her clinical background also drove a steady stream of practical, less headline-grabbing bills. Hollinger sponsored and backed home- and community-based Medicaid waivers, measures to expand nursing in schools, patient-care advisory committees, and policies to ease advancement for nurses educated in hospital programs. Legislative sponsor pages show Hollinger listed as a patron on dozens of health and education measures throughout the 1990s and 2000s, according to the Maryland General Assembly.
Colleagues Remember a Hands-On Fixer
Former lawmakers and staff describe Hollinger as practical and persistent, with a knack for turning abstract policy questions into something you could see and touch. She was "a force to be reckoned with," former U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin said, and Senate President Bill Ferguson called her a "small stature, mighty warrior," according to Maryland Matters.
Friends also recall the small, theatrical moments that helped her seal votes. The Baltimore Banner reported that she once climbed onto a dump truck in a drizzle in Annapolis to prove drivers could secure tarps in the rain, a literal, rain-soaked demonstration of how she liked to answer questions with evidence.
Funeral, Flags and Memory
Services are scheduled for Sunday at Sol Levinson's Chapel in Pikesville, with interment at Oheb Shalom Memorial Park in Reisterstown, and the family has requested that memorial contributions be directed to the SEED School of Maryland, according to JMore. Gov. Wes Moore ordered the Maryland flag lowered to half-staff on the day of interment, per HalfStaff.org.
Colleagues say Hollinger's real memorial is written into Maryland law: statutes that grew directly from what she saw while caring for patients, now woven into the daily life of the state's hospitals, schools, and the rules that govern them.
