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# Pioneering nurse to be laid to rest
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/pioneering-nurse-to-be-laid-to-rest/
- Published: 2004-03-19T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T04:02:42.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Education, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By Daily Press staff*

Funeral services for Nursing Professor Emeritus Maurine Brown — the first African American instructor in Santa Monica College’s nursing program — will be held at 10 a.m. on Friday at Holy Tabernacle of God Church, 6701 West Blvd., Inglewood.

Brown had a profound effect on the lives of the hundreds of students she taught during her 35-year tenure. She passed away last Thursday at the age of 75.

Brown is remembered by coworkers and students as a person of strength who worked hard to achieve her dream of becoming a nurse and who broke ground for African Americans. She had to drive from her home in Los Angeles to what was then called Fullerton Junior College to get her nursing training, even though she and her husband were raising their two young sons. At the time, nursing schools in Los Angeles were not accepting African Americans.

Brown started teaching in a federally funded licensed vocational nurse program at SMC in 1965\. In 1968, the registered nurse program was started at SMC, and she began teaching advanced medical-surgical nursing, a subject she continued to teach until her retirement in January 2001.

While a clinical instructor for SMC at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica in the mid- 1960s, she was the first African American registered nurse at the medical facility. Brown helped guide hundreds of students — and, in many cases, the sons and daughters of her former students — through SMC’s nursing program.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 19, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/031904.pdf?ref=smdp.com)