The Words We've Heard
Ordinary lives, extraordinary stories, and wisdom gained through a lifetime: these are the tales of Baby Boomers. Whether you need a reminder that life can be fulfilling without being famous, are wondering just how much has changed in a generation, want a bit of life advice, or simply love a good personal story, there are words to be heard.
The Words We've Heard
Ep. 11: Travel, Transition, and Creating a Career in an Emerging Field with Cindy
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Travel, Transition, and Creating a Career in an Emerging Field with Cindy
In this episode of The Words We’ve Heard, host Marbree Sullivan sits down with Cindy, whose life bridges academia, ministry, and family with humility and grace. From an idyllic childhood in Connecticut to studying abroad in the Netherlands as a teenager, Cindy’s early years sparked a lifelong love of language, learning, and global awareness.
She shares the experience of attending a girl’s school in Europe, encountering sexism in college, transferring to Yale, finding a calling in an emerging profession, and more. Cindy speaks candidly about losing her mother at a young age, divorce, finding a true life partner in her second husband, how retirement opened the door to a surprising second career as a deacon, and the gift of learning different cultures.
This is a story about broadening perspectives, service, family, education, and the courage to make your way in the world.
🎧 Key Moments in the Episode
- [00:00:00] – A Joyful Childhood in Connecticut and Relocating as a Teen
- [00:07:25] – Studying Abroad in the Netherlands and Learning to Dream in Dutch
- [00:12:45] – Coming Home: Culture Shock and Debate Team
- [00:17:27] – Choosing a Course of Study and Transferring to Yale
- [00:21:12] – Losing Her Mother and Starting Life as an Adult
- [00:23:40] – Finding Her Calling in Social Work
- [00:28:00] – Raising a Family, Pursuing a PhD, and Balancing it All
- [00:35:00] – Becoming a Deacon and Discovering a Second Vocation
- [00:40:58] – Living with Her Husband’s Alzheimer’s and Shifting Needs
- [00:48:55] – A Wish for the World: Be Kind to One Another
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- Leave a review to help more people discover the show
- Follow The Words We’ve Heard for more stories of everyday lives we can all aspire to
[00:00:00] Marbree: Welcome to The Words We've Heard. This is Marbree Sullivan, and each week I sit down with a baby boomer to capture their stories, ask for a bit of advice, and hold on to the memories of the post World War II generation. Join me as we journey through everyday lives and extraordinary stories
[00:00:25] raised in Connecticut and Pennsylvania suburbs. Cindy broadened her horizons at a young age, spending her junior year of high school in the Netherlands, a member of Yale's first fully co-ed graduating class. Yes, that happened as recently as the early 1970s. Cindy went on to an impressive career in social work and academia while raising a family.
[00:00:50] I think we can safely say it's a far cry from the path an early college advisor suggested she pursue.[00:01:00]
[00:01:02] Hello, Cindy. Hello. It's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for sitting down with me.
[00:01:07] Cindy: I'm happy to do so.
[00:01:08] Marbree: When you think about your childhood, what comes to mind?
[00:01:12] Cindy: I had a, a beautiful, I almost idyllic childhood living in Avon, Connecticut. Um, we grew up. On the side of Avon Mountain, um, with, uh, forest behind US Meadows all around with, uh, sheep and cows and bulls and, um, a very, very quiet street where we could ride our bikes up and down the street without any trouble.
[00:01:38] So it seems like we were always outside running around. Uh, in great freedom, but in a way that, uh, there was no danger. And we were, when possible, we were outside all of the time and enjoying the, the meadows and the forests and the bikes and the playing hopscotch and, uh, touch football [00:02:00] and baseball and jump roping and it was very good.
[00:02:04] Do you have siblings? I have, uh, one sister, two years younger than I.
[00:02:08] Marbree: How did your family wind up in Avon, Connecticut?
[00:02:11] Cindy: My father worked, um, in Hartford and Avon was a suburb, so my parents moved there a couple years after I was born.
[00:02:20] Marbree: Did you have any extended family in the area?
[00:02:22] Cindy: No. My closest relatives were my grandparents and they, they lived in New Jersey and we went to visit them usually once or twice a month, and they would visit us in Connecticut once or twice a month.
[00:02:35] And my, uh, turtle grandparents lived in Fort Worth, Texas, and they would come once a year, um, on the train from Fort Worth. And we always looked forward to, to their being with us for, oh, I don't know, 10 days or so. Uh, each summer.
[00:02:54] Marbree: Did you ever take the train to visit them? No. No. Uh, I never, I never did.
[00:02:58] That's a
[00:02:58] Cindy: shame.
[00:02:59] Marbree: That would've been quite the [00:03:00] journey, I think it would've been. Were there lots of other kids in the area that you, you played with?
[00:03:05] Cindy: I wouldn't say lots. Um, maybe five or six. It was enough to, to kind of have a, a baseball game or a football game, and we did, we did all kinds of crazy things.
[00:03:15] We made up plays and invited our parents and had beauty pageants and. It was fun.
[00:03:22] Marbree: Yeah. Were you there all the way through high school?
[00:03:24] Cindy: No. Um. Before going into seventh grade, um, the federal government decided they needed the space where my dad's factory was for, uh, an interstate highway construction. And so we had to relocate and we relocated.
[00:03:43] Um, Northeastern Pennsylvania outside of Scranton and lived in, uh, in Clark Summit and, uh, Clark Green and that area through my college years.
[00:03:53] Marbree: How was it for you moving at that age?
[00:03:56] Cindy: Well, it was kind of scary, um, but [00:04:00] it worked out fine. Um, but it, you know, it's a deal of making new friends and learning about a new environment.
[00:04:07] Um, but I think we made the transition pretty well.
[00:04:11] Marbree: Did your mother work.
[00:04:12] Cindy: My mother was trained as a commercial artist, and so, uh, she did work, um, for most of the time between her training and, uh, the time she met my father. And after they got married, she did not work outside the home again. Um, the closest she came to that was, uh.
[00:04:32] Helping at a store where they had knitting materials and she helped teach other people how to knit and, uh, got yarn in return. That was the, the extent of her, um, employment outside the home.
[00:04:45] Marbree: Yeah. Did you work when you were in high school?
[00:04:48] Cindy: Uh, the only time that I worked was the summer before. College?
[00:04:55] College after my senior year. Oh, no, no, no, no more than once. I'm [00:05:00] sorry. A couple of summers and the most memorable summer oh, was when a, a number of us from the high school got on as factory workers at Tops bubblegum factory. And, uh, we would, we would get in the car together and, and commute. It was, oh, maybe a 20 minute ride to the factory.
[00:05:20] And, uh, we were involved with packaging tops, bubble gum.
[00:05:25] Marbree: How was that?
[00:05:26] Cindy: It was bizarre. It was absolutely bizarre. Uh, very, very boring work. And so, um, we would sometimes be together and we would amuse one another by reciting poetry or whatever we learned in school. And sometimes we did some naughty things.
[00:05:43] Like I remember one time finding like five. Cards that had the same baseball player and put them all together in one pack. So the kid who bought that pack would get five of some unknown baseball player. Um, the whole place was [00:06:00] suffused with sugar in the air. And so when you left, you'd be covered with, with a white filmy powder.
[00:06:09] And actually you breathed that, which wasn't very good. So there were some health issues about working there, but it was a summer job and it was something that I. A number of us did together.
[00:06:20] Marbree: Did you like school?
[00:06:22] Cindy: Yes. Yes, I did. Uh, throughout my life from kindergarten through PhD, I've always liked learning and, and participating in school.
[00:06:33] So how big was your high school? I think that in our senior graduating class, there were about 220 people.
[00:06:40] Marbree: Okay.
[00:06:41] Cindy: So it wasn't terribly big, but it was big enough that I didn't know everyone Well. I have known everybody's name, but not everyone. Well,
[00:06:51] Marbree: yeah. Did you play any sports or, I realize given that era there weren't so many available for girls, but were, were there any activities that you were part of?
[00:06:59] Cindy: [00:07:00] Um, well, I was for I think one year on the field hockey team. But again, I, I wasn't much of an athlete, um, and I didn't like all that running around in the cold air all that much. But the activity that I gravitated to was, um, high school debate class or, or team, I guess it was. And, uh, so I was, I was a high school debater and in my.
[00:07:25] Junior year I was an exchange student and went to live in the Netherlands, uh, for a year, uh, under the auspices of the Rotary Club. So I did miss one year of high school in the us.
[00:07:38] Marbree: How was that?
[00:07:40] Cindy: Well, I. I think in some ways I bit off more than I could too. I, I wanted to learn more about the world and learn about it being in a different place, and I certainly did that.
[00:07:52] But at the beginning I was pretty homesick. And of course, although most everyone in the Netherlands speaks [00:08:00] English, uh, in day-to-day life, you speak Dutch. So it took a while for me to get able, and I did become able to live my life. With the Dutch language and even dream in it. So that worked out. I attended a school which was called, uh, called a girls school actually, and they had a kind of a different curriculum in that they emphasized in a languages, of course you learned languages, uh, and um, literature.
[00:08:28] Also art history. And we took a crafts course and, um, drawing and painting and embroidery. And I guess I had a special program of study because I was going back to an American high school. So I took, I think it was trigonometry in the co-ed school that was adjacent to the girls school. So my, my female classmates didn't have to take the, the math that I took, but, um.
[00:08:58] I did that.
[00:08:59] Marbree: What other [00:09:00] differences were there between the girls and and the boys in terms of the education?
[00:09:05] Cindy: I. Well, the co-ed high there, there are actually two kinds of, at this time there were two kinds of co-ed high schools in, um, the Netherlands, and one was classical education. And I didn't do this fortunately, in addition to, uh.
[00:09:22] English and French and German. And Dutch. You also learned Latin and Greek, and you also had mathematics and science. Uh, and, and that schooling was the best ticket to, uh, a free university education. And then the next rank was the one that I went to, which was. All of those things except Latin Creek. And that would prepare you for, um, university education as well?
[00:09:52] I don't think the girls who went to the school that I went to, um, were eligible for university education. [00:10:00] Probably they couldn't have passed the entrance exams, but it was a really good preparation for being a wife and a mother. And that was how it was intended. Hmm. I expect I've changed a lot since then.
[00:10:11] I mean, that was the 1960s.
[00:10:14] Marbree: Yeah, I, I agree. I'm sure things have shifted. How many languages did you leave there speaking?
[00:10:19] Cindy: Well, I had begun studying French before I left the US and I continued that in the Netherlands. And then of course I learned Dutch and one of the teachers was very eager that I learned German.
[00:10:36] She gave me private tutoring lessons in German, and I was learning German from Dutch, and that's kind of challenging because they're very similar languages. And so when I went back to the US, um, I could converse in more or less in French. And German as well as Dutch and English. And when I went to college, [00:11:00] I ended up majoring in German.
[00:11:02] So it had longer term consequences than just this one woman wanting, wanting to teach that American girl German. So
[00:11:11] Marbree: do you remember any Dutch?
[00:11:12] Cindy: I do, but not, not nearly as much as the German, because obviously I supplemented that with, with four years of college. So
[00:11:19] Marbree: yeah. How was it socially for you during that year in the Netherlands?
[00:11:24] Cindy: Um, well, it was really quite different from going to high school in the us. First of all, there weren't any boys around really. So, you know, I had left a boyfriend and a, a kind of a dating scene and, you know, football games and parties and stuff, and it was wasn't very social for me at all. I was mostly hanging out with my family, my Dutch families, well, actually there were three.
[00:11:49] That was the, the plan was that you would live with three different families. During the 12 month period. And I did.
[00:11:56] Marbree: Yeah. That must have been tough, just thinking about that [00:12:00] social component that at that age of life is so important. Yeah. To fig, you know, figuring out who you are and how you relate to people and, and all of that.
[00:12:07] Cindy: Yep. It, it was, it was, but it was in, you know, in retrospect it was a, a very good learning experience and there were. Seven or eight of US American students who went to, um, the Netherlands together, and we were each in different cities, but the Rotary program arranged for us to have five or six different get togethers during the year.
[00:12:34] And so that was. An opportunity to be with American kids and compare the experiences that we had in the, in the different cities.
[00:12:42] Marbree: Yeah. And then how was it going back for your senior year?
[00:12:45] Cindy: Oh wow, that was wild. Um, first of all, the boyfriend that I had had before, uh, we just didn't click. I mean, it wasn't like it was a bad thing, it just didn't click.
[00:12:56] Um, so that relationship was over and [00:13:00] I. I think I put a lot of my energy into the, the debating team and would hang out with the, I guess there was only one other, one or two other female debaters. And so I mostly hung out with the guys who were on the debating team and um, somehow some of the things about American High School just didn't make any sense to me anymore, so I just kind of backed away from them.
[00:13:23] Marbree: Like what?
[00:13:24] Cindy: Senior class elections. I think people got really big into that. Not
[00:13:29] Marbree: things that are just so specific to the high school years and don't really mean anything in the long run.
[00:13:34] Cindy: Yeah,
[00:13:35] Marbree: yeah, I could see that. Before I move on to, to the college years, did you have a good relationship with your sister?
[00:13:41] Cindy: I. Yes, but not close. You know, we, we got along and, uh, there was another element in our family. Um, in our senior year we had exchange students from other places and, uh, there was a German exchange student who was very unhappy at her placement and she ended up living with us from [00:14:00] about November through the end of the school year.
[00:14:03] And we are still friends with her. We vacationed together in Europe. She's visited us here. She was actually a lot closer with my sister after graduation and my sister's family used to travel to Germany every, almost every summer and go sailing with her and her husband. And just recently, my sister spent a month with her in Germany.
[00:14:26] So that relationship continues. She's been here many times and we've vacationed together all over the country. She, my sister and I.
[00:14:34] Marbree: That's wonderful.
[00:14:35] Cindy: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:36] Marbree: Do you feel that studying abroad at that age changed your perspective for the rest of your life? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. How do you think it changed things for you?
[00:14:47] Cindy: Well, you just, you realize that even though the culture in the Netherlands is. More similar to the United States than say, you know, if I'd lived in Japan or India or something like that. People have different [00:15:00] perspectives on how things are and how things should be and what is appropriate. And uh, that gave me a much broader perspective on every aspect of living in the world, really.
[00:15:12] Um, yeah, to realize that people think, think differently about things that you take for granted as truth. Was, um, amazing.
[00:15:20] Marbree: Yeah, I agree. Yeah.
[00:15:21] Cindy: So there were some, you know, sad and difficult parts, but I'm very, very glad in retrospect that I did it. And of course, my love of seeing other places and learning about other places has, has continued and, uh, will continue.
[00:15:34] Marbree: Yeah. So then college. Was the decision to study German in any way related to hosting that German student?
[00:15:40] Cindy: Um, I suppose so. It was funny. I, I, uh, was at a, at a small liberal arts college, Swarthmore College outside of Pennsylvania, uh, for my first two years, and I must have taken. A proficiency test in German to see where I would place.
[00:15:57] And I've always thought the German [00:16:00] faculty there were very good and very nice people, but they were struggling because not too many people wanted to major or even take their classes. And when they found someone who was sort of eager or interested or potentially interested, they were very, very encouraging.
[00:16:18] And that was nice. And so, uh, apparently I scored well enough to, to start with literature and we always had very small classes, usually no more than seven or eight. And, uh, got to know our professors really well, and, um, they kept encouraging me and so I. Followed along. It's funny, I had initially thought, well, with all these languages, maybe I should study political science and go into the State Department.
[00:16:48] And that was my initial plan. And uh, then I went to see my political science advisor and sexism raised its ugly head when we started talking about, uh. Future [00:17:00] plans and he said, oh, with all that language knowledge, you would just be fantastic as a secretary and an import expert for him. And I just kind of looked at him and didn't wanna ever see him again.
[00:17:14] Marbree: I
[00:17:15] Cindy: don't blame
[00:17:15] Marbree: you.
[00:17:16] Cindy: And the political science classes that I was taking were really not that interesting. And so I guess I just landed where they liked me and appreciated me in the German department.
[00:17:27] Marbree: And with that transition, did you have any thought of what you might wanna do with the degree?
[00:17:32] Cindy: No. Um, you know, I was moving along there pretty firmly and, and my, my father, who was a very practical person, said, what do you expect to do, um, as a German major in the future?
[00:17:46] And the only thing I could think of was, was to teach German at the high school level. So. When I got to my junior and senior year, I qualified, uh, I took the necessary courses to qualify as a high school German [00:18:00] teacher. I actually did practice teaching, but I didn't end up there. But I, I was qualified. I could have, I could have done that after graduation from college.
[00:18:09] Marbree: And you said that you spent the first two years at Swarthmore?
[00:18:11] Cindy: I did. So
[00:18:12] Marbree: where did you go and why?
[00:18:14] Cindy: Um, I went to Yale University and that was the year that the Ivys or. At least some of them opened their doors to women as transfer students and as freshmen. And so I began to think that Swarthmore was a little small and isolated and I wanted to be in a bigger, more robust environment.
[00:18:35] And I applied to, I. Yale and to Princeton. And at the time I, well at the time I was dating a, a Princeton student, um, and decided and was accepted at both and decided that it would be better for me to be separate from his world. And so I, I went to Yale instead
[00:18:53] Marbree: and continued studying German.
[00:18:55] Cindy: Yeah, continued in German.
[00:18:56] Marbree: So does that mean that you would've been in the first class [00:19:00] of co-ed graduates from Yale? Yes,
[00:19:03] Cindy: that's correct. That's correct, and my boyfriend subsequently graduated from Princeton and we married and we were the first undergraduates from Princeton and Yale to marry.
[00:19:14] Marbree: Wow. That's amazing. All right, so you had the credentials to teach.
[00:19:19] And you, and you ultimately did not. So then what happened after you graduated?
[00:19:23] Cindy: Well, it, it started to happen before I graduated actually. I took a, a course in, um, I think it was existential psychology, and I really, really loved it. Thought, you know, that would be something I would really like to be, would be a clinical psychologist.
[00:19:40] And I talked to my teacher and she said, well. You know, to get into graduate school in psychology, you really have to have an undergraduate major in psychology. But there's something that's sort of similar that might be of interest to you, and that is social work. And the more I looked [00:20:00] into it, the more I thought that that was what I was going to do.
[00:20:03] So that's, uh, the story was that I, I moved with. My boyfriend who had a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, uh, to study philosophy. And we went out to Madison together and I worked as a secretary, um, for a year. Didn't have to use my language skills, um, in that position. And by that time I was a Wisconsin resident.
[00:20:29] And so then I entered the, um, social work program at the University of Wisconsin and earned my master's degree.
[00:20:35] Marbree: Okay. We'll carry on with that line in a moment, but I wanna back up.
[00:20:38] Cindy: Okay.
[00:20:39] Marbree: Man. Who became your husband? Yeah. You were dating at least by the time you were at Swarthmore? Yes. Where did you meet him?
[00:20:44] Cindy: It was a blind date. I don't know how it actually happened, but anyway, I took the little train up to Princeton and there he was, and we got along. Okay. And we kept on dating
[00:20:54] Marbree: and then So it was a long distance relationship from the start? Yes. Until you both graduated?
[00:20:59] Cindy: Yes. [00:21:00]
[00:21:00] Marbree: When did you get married? I.
[00:21:01] Cindy: Um, we graduated in June and then we moved together to Madison and lived together in Madison for the fall semester and went home to Pennsylvania and married.
[00:21:13] So it was about six months, um, after we graduated and about two years after we had met one another.
[00:21:19] Marbree: How did your families feel about the two of you moving together before being married?
[00:21:24] Cindy: I don't think there was any particular problem with that. Um, the summer between my junior and senior year in college was a very difficult one because my mother had a diagnosis of cancer and she died before I went into my senior year of college.
[00:21:44] And, you know, my dad did what he could to kind of keep everything going, but, uh, he didn't seem to, you know, he thought, you know, once you're outta college, it's your own life and you can decide what you wanna do.
[00:21:57] Marbree: I'm so sorry that you lost your mother.
[00:21:59] Cindy: [00:22:00] So there was no real objection. It was just kind of, well, that's what you gotta do, that's what you're gonna do.
[00:22:05] So.
[00:22:07] Marbree: How was it for you, if you don't mind me asking, and I'm very sorry that you lost your mother at, at such a young age. How was that for you?
[00:22:15] Cindy: Awful. You know, uh, I, I think it was the junior year at Yale and actually I think I was visiting Bob at Princeton, and I think my folks knew that. And they called me up one morning and, uh.
[00:22:30] I must have had Bob's phone number. There weren't any cell phones around in the dorm and uh said We'd like you to come down to Philadelphia. Your mom has cancer diagnosis and we need to talk about it. So I think my dad had known for a couple of months and he kind of brought us all to Philadelphia 'cause that's where she was being treated maybe.
[00:22:52] And it was just a horrible. Thing to realize, you know, that she had a terminal illness. But my sister and I were encouraged to continue [00:23:00] our spring semester at school and to go home when we could. And, um, he, I think, arranged for us to get jobs that summer so that we had, I think they were at businesses that his friends ran or something.
[00:23:15] So we were home all summer while she was in her. Last days. And, uh, actually she died really just a couple of days before school started in the fall. Oh. And so that senior year was, was, um, was tough and um,
[00:23:31] Marbree: yeah, I can imagine.
[00:23:32] Cindy: I graduated and I was with Bob and that was a, a comfort and um
[00:23:38] Marbree: hmm.
[00:23:39] Cindy: We got through it.
[00:23:40] Marbree: Yeah. That's tough. You went to Wisconsin, correct. Spent the year as a secretary and then started graduate school?
[00:23:47] Cindy: Correct.
[00:23:47] Marbree: And how was that? Did you enjoy it?
[00:23:49] Cindy: Yeah, it was great. I mean, we didn't, we didn't have any money to speak of, we were a hundred percent on our own. Both of our parents thought, you know, after they'd paid for college education, that that [00:24:00] was our thing.
[00:24:01] After that. That's a, it was great. It was fun. We were graduate students and living on nothing and having fun mostly.
[00:24:08] Marbree: Yeah,
[00:24:09] Cindy: and I liked what I was studying. I, I thought I had found something that, uh, really was me, the idea of helping other people. And I kind of got in on the ground floor of a aspect of social work that has subsequently obviously taken off.
[00:24:25] Uh, and that was, um, working with older adults. And at the beginning of my study there, it would be, you know, it would've been 71, 72 people didn't. Pay much attention to the need that there was going to be for people who were knowledgeable about services and opportunities for older people. So I was one of a really very few people in the country, even who was trained in that field.
[00:24:52] It's hard to believe now, but there weren't even textbooks for studying older adults at that time.
[00:24:59] Marbree: How long [00:25:00] were you in Madison?
[00:25:00] Cindy: Three years.
[00:25:01] Marbree: Okay. So basically the time it took for each of you to get through graduate degree?
[00:25:05] Cindy: Well, no, Bob had not finished his doctoral degree, but I got a job at the University of Alabama very shortly after I graduated and it was a um, job.
[00:25:18] Teaching in a school of social work, which was, you know, sort of remarkable. So he moved to Alabama with me and was basically writing his dissertation and commuting back to Wisconsin. I think one semester he stayed up there and I commuted up there. After he got his degree, he got a, a job in Alabama as well.
[00:25:38] So, uh, he was at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, which is about 50 miles from Tuscaloosa where I was.
[00:25:45] Marbree: So you went back to that long distance relationship again for a time there. Did you ever actually practice, or did you go directly into, other than the, you know, the training component?
[00:25:53] Cindy: That's the amazing thing.
[00:25:55] I really never had a full-time job as a social [00:26:00] worker practicing social work. I did a lot of supervision of students. My first year had groups of students who were working, um, with older adults in public housing here in, in Tuscaloosa, and I was advising them on what they were doing and spent a lot of time in the housing projects with them.
[00:26:18] But I was also teaching at night this introductory course in social work. With older adults, as I said, without a textbook. 'cause there really weren't any at the time. And so I was just kind of putting together articles and other stuff and loving it. And there was at the University of Alabama School of Social Work, a place called the Center for the Study of Aging, which I affiliated with and actually subsequently became, I guess they called me the assistant director of it and then.
[00:26:47] Some years later I was running it, so I, I was always in that field. I really liked my university life. I really did.
[00:26:55] Marbree: Were you there your entire career?
[00:26:57] Cindy: That's correct, yep. And, um, [00:27:00] I taught many different classes at the undergraduate level. I taught a bunch of courses in aging, one or two at the graduate level.
[00:27:08] But after a while, I was asked to serve as I. Acting dean of the school when the dean left, and then they made me the dean of the school. And so at age 39 and being the youngest member of the faculty, I became the boss and I was the dean for 13 years. And um, I got the respect and. Good cooperation of almost all of the faculty members.
[00:27:38] And of course, you know, I was recruiting new people and, you know, setting salaries, you know, all the things that a, an academic dean does. And, uh, then after 13 years I kind of thought, that's enough. I'm tired of this stuff. And I went back to a faculty position and wasn't exactly a faculty position because some folks asked me to [00:28:00] head the center for.
[00:28:01] Aging, and so I was doing a lot of grant writing and a lot of research. At that point, we haven't even gotten to my divorce and my second marriage, that was a period from about 2000 to 2008, and then I retired as a faculty member. Then they had another disastrous situation with leadership, and the university asked me to come back and serve as Dean again, which I did for four years before I retired.
[00:28:33] Retired. During that period, before I became the dean, it became really clear that the University of Alabama wanted to move forward in its reputation and competence, and so. All of the people who were teaching with master's degrees were encouraged to get doctoral degrees and a number of them in the school of social work weren't in a position [00:29:00] to go to another place and do that.
[00:29:02] So they ended up getting doctoral degrees in like educational leadership in the College of Education, things like that. But. I decided to get a doctoral degree in social work, and so I applied to all of the doctoral programs in social work in the United States, and the place that we settled on was, uh, the University of Denver.
[00:29:24] And so in, uh. Well, about 1980 we moved our family, um, which then included my two sons and my husband and my husband's daughter to Denver, and I was able to complete the coursework in one year and then came home. Took a leave of absent a, a second leave of absence and wrote my dissertation while we were living here.
[00:29:51] Yeah. And of course my husband was extremely supportive. He went on sabbatical that year and he's the one who, who took the nursing baby [00:30:00] when I had to go to class. And, you know, we tag teamed it through a PhD program.
[00:30:05] Marbree: Okay, so let's talk about that. And had you divorced? So is this a second husband or your first husband?
[00:30:10] Cindy: No, um, my first husband and I divorced in 1978. Shortly after the birth of our son. He was just a baby then like a year. You're too old. And then I came to know better a colleague at the University of Alabama and we ended up marrying, David is a sociologist and so we had a lot in common and he's the one who taught me how to become a researcher.
[00:30:33] Our nuclear family was, was his daughter and my son, and the son that was born to us subsequently.
[00:30:41] Marbree: And then you uprooted everyone for a year to go to Denver.
[00:30:44] Cindy: Correct.
[00:30:44] Marbree: Was your husband working?
[00:30:46] Cindy: He was on sabbatical. Okay. But he picked up a course or two at Denver so that he could add some money to the house.
[00:30:53] Marbree: Okay. So he's teaching a little bit. You are studying, were you also teaching as part of the PhD program?
[00:30:59] Cindy: Well, I had [00:31:00] a. Teaching assistantship and my teaching assistantship was supervision of students in, uh, their internships. So I would drive all over Denver and meet with them and their in-house supervisors and talk with them about their programs and what they were learning.
[00:31:16] Marbree: How on earth did you get through that year? Yeah,
[00:31:18] Cindy: we made it, he had an office in the sociology department, which wasn't too far from the school of social work, and he would teach from 12 to one. So he would bring the baby in. John and I would sit at his desk and Nurse John and he'd go teach sociology. And then when he was done, I'd hand him John and run across the street to my one o'clock class with milk dripping down my sweater.
[00:31:45] Marbree: Good teamwork.
[00:31:46] Cindy: Yep. Worked out fun. Oh yeah, Uhhuh. We have been real, real partners over the years because once we got back to Alabama then, and before I was asked to go into the deanship, he was [00:32:00] asked to be an associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. So he learned a lot about university policies and all that kind of stuff.
[00:32:09] And so I had a, a mentor at home and he was really at a different level than I was.
[00:32:15] Marbree: Yeah. That's incredibly fortunate to have a partnership that Strong.
[00:32:19] Cindy: Mm-hmm. Sure is.
[00:32:21] Marbree: Yeah. Through all those years, you've obviously interacted with students at the, at every stage of their progression.
[00:32:28] Cindy: Correct.
[00:32:28] Marbree: If you were talking to somebody who were at the start of their career in whatever field, any advice you'd give them on finding their way?
[00:32:36] Forward. Well, I
[00:32:37] Cindy: think it would probably be to be open-minded and try to learn as much as you can about the field that you're in or the organization that you're in, and the jobs that you are not doing at that organization, which are. Allied with what you're doing so that you have a, a good perspective on everybody that you can bring [00:33:00] to the table.
[00:33:00] And also to be keenly aware of the external environment. Uh, I guess I'm thinking of, you know, as a social worker, you wanna know about all the other agencies in your community and who does what so that you can quickly refer someone to something else. Um. The other thing is just to be fair and truthful and upright in all that you do, and not try to be duplicitous or sneaky or one-upping people.
[00:33:27] Um, try to be an honest person who works hard.
[00:33:31] Marbree: Those are all good things. Shifting gears, what things have you done outside of work over the years that. Brought you joy.
[00:33:37] Cindy: I do like to travel and, and Dave and I have been all over the place. And even when I was married to Bob, we took a, a summer with backpacks and U rail passes and went through Europe.
[00:33:49] So the travel is important, but the other things that I like to do include gardening and cooking. And I've done a fair amount of knitting. Uh, over the [00:34:00] years I like to have parties, uh, and cook for other people. Um, I like being around my family very much, and Dave and I really never had much of a social life.
[00:34:15] I. You know, like socializing with other couples because our evening time was, and weekend time was usually with the kids doing things with, you know, going to soccer games and basketball games and math competitions and all that kind of stuff. Um, and then the social life was mostly, uh, with the university.
[00:34:34] So, you know, we did see people and stuff, but it wasn't like we had a, a group of adult friends that we hung out with.
[00:34:41] Marbree: Yeah.
[00:34:41] Cindy: But it seemed like we were always busy and usually enjoying ourselves and, and we did put a lot of our energy into the children as they were growing up.
[00:34:50] Marbree: Since retirement, how have you been keeping busy?
[00:34:53] Cindy: Okay. I, um, began a course that's offered through the, um, episcopal church [00:35:00] called Education for Ministry back in 1980. It's a four year course. And I had virtually no affiliation with a church organization since I had entered college. And I yearned. And if you can imagine this, uh, I don't know how, what your background is about being in the south, but it is, it's so.
[00:35:23] Pervasively Christian and increasingly sort of Christian nationalist. And I didn't wanna have anything to do with that. But I did tell my kids that if they ever wanted to go to church, um, they should tell me and I would go with them. But there were some stipulations. I didn't want them to go any of these holy roller places where they're gonna scare 'em about hell and everything.
[00:35:45] So we ended up in an Episcopal church here in town. Which is very progressive and uh, I took this course and loved it and just learned, learned lots. And one of the guys who was teaching it was actually one of my fellow [00:36:00] deans at the University of Alabama. He was the dean of the College of Community Health Sciences and at about the third or fourth year, and he was also an ordained deacon in the Episcopal church.
[00:36:11] Now, he had a different life course than I did. I think he had been, you know, in church activities his entire life. But with our experience together in this four year course, he thought maybe that would be something I would like to do. And the more I learned about it, the more I thought, yeah, I think I could do this.
[00:36:29] Because being a deacon in the Episcopal church is sort of like being. A church social worker, um, that is the, um, definition of a deacon is a person who builds a bridge between the church and the world and brings the needs of the world to the church so the church can respond and then also represents the church.
[00:36:49] In the community in part by, you know, doing good and appropriate things. And I thought, well, this would be a great retirement career. [00:37:00] Now deacons are non depend, which means that you're a hundred percent volunteer. But as I decided more and more that I wanted to do this, it is over a period of three or four years actually, um, and I went through all the processes because this is.
[00:37:17] Episcopal church takes this very seriously. And so you have to, you know, go through a physical exam and a psychological exam, and then a, a weekend vetting experience at a church camp with your husband. Make sure that the match is correct and meeting with bishops and all, all this stuff. And then you're able to take a two year weekend course to become a deacon.
[00:37:41] So I did all this. More or less during my first retirement that is going through all this process and I really liked it. And then they asked me to come back and be the dean. And so I couldn't be a fully [00:38:00] time committed deacon, but I saw. What I was doing as a dean was appropriate to the deacon role. I, I, it's not like I wore a collar to the office, but I was enacting that role in a different way.
[00:38:14] And I did that for about, well, four, four years. And then I said, this is enough. I, I'm gonna really retire. And so I did. And then I got more involved in the diaconate role. And, uh, at about that time, the church I was going to got a new. Rector, who's a really fine man, and so he's just encouraged me to do whatever I want.
[00:38:36] Um, and so, you know, I preach, I visit people in the hospital. I run the outreach committee. I, for a long time, I kind of ran what they called the Deacon's Deli, which is a food pantry that's open every Tuesday morning, and low income people come in and get to select food. Um, I served on a couple of different.
[00:38:57] Boards of directors in the [00:39:00] community. So I've been, that's my second career. That's my post-retirement career. And that's, I'm still doing it. I preached two sermons last week and ought to be getting ready for another one. So that's, that's where I spend the bulk of my time. That's not at home. And then also, you know, there are obviously a lot of the other churches.
[00:39:19] In the state have deacons. And so we have a community of people that I've been working with and known for, you know, 15 or so years. And so that provides another source of community and social support. And we get together from time to time, conventions and weekends up at the camp and stuff like that. So that's mostly my post-retirement life.
[00:39:40] In addition to, um, doing stuff with kids, doing stuff with Dave and, um, traveling well, which is mostly doing stuff with Dave. So that sort of encapsulates my retirement activity and I, it's really, sometimes it's like more than 30 hours a week doing that stuff. So
[00:39:58] Marbree: I can imagine it sounds [00:40:00] like a pretty busy life.
[00:40:01] Cindy: Yeah. In the last couple of years, my life has gotten more different and more. Busy because Dave has a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, although he doesn't have a lot of the bad things that go along with Alzheimer's right now, he has absolutely no memory. You know, like I'll say, what did you have for lunch?
[00:40:20] I don't remember. Or I'll ask him to empty the dishwasher and. About half the things he puts in the wrong place. I can leave him alone for three or four hours safely, I think right now. But I do all the driving, I do all the cognitive stuff, and he's my partner, but he's not the partner that was writing articles for referee journals or, you know, talking with me about, uh, administrative issues at the university.
[00:40:50] He, he's just not. Oh,
[00:40:52] Marbree: I'm so sorry.
[00:40:53] Cindy: So my, this part of my retirement life for maybe the last, what [00:41:00] five years or so, has been gradually adapting to that reality of my life and, uh, trying to, you know, put one foot in front of the other every day.
[00:41:11] Marbree: Yeah.
[00:41:12] Cindy: And I have found that I've had to give up a number of the outside the house responsibilities that I had before.
[00:41:20] 'cause I was driving myself crazy and, uh, I didn't need to be doing, after a lot of people convinced me I didn't need to be doing all that many things. I agreed I didn't. And so life is better now.
[00:41:31] Marbree: Yeah. Hmm. I'm glad you've been able to step back and refocus. All right. I'm gonna ask a, a series of questions.
[00:41:37] Looking back, even though there are other things that I wanna ask about your life, so as you look back over the course of your life, were there decisions that you made that in the moment felt mundane or unimportant? But when you look at them now, you can see shaped the course of your life. No,
[00:41:53] Cindy: I mean, nothing comes to mind immediately.
[00:41:55] I think most of the decisions that I've made that have shaped the course of my life have been [00:42:00] deliberate and well thought through. Now, I'm gonna think about this obviously over the next couple of days, but, um, nothing comes to mind
[00:42:08] Marbree: as you look back. Who would you say are the handful of people who have been the most influential in your life?
[00:42:16] Cindy: Okay. And my father who set the stage for most of the values that I hold, my husband, Dave, there was a colleague at the School of Social Work, uh, who actually joined the faculty the same year as I did, and he was very influential. In my life in helping me to understand what it meant to be a faculty member and, and a researcher and a writer.
[00:42:41] And actually, um, he was an ordained minister before he became a college professor. And, you know, he always used to refer to me as a, as a heathen or a pagan or something like that because I didn't go to church. And he would probably be amused. He. He died several years ago to see [00:43:00] that. Now I'm a, a respected member of the clergy, um, but he was important in my life.
[00:43:06] Um, so, and then, uh, I think more recently, um, my current boss or rector Mark, uh, who's taught me a lot. So I guess that's four people. How many do you want? Yeah, that's
[00:43:21] Marbree: fine.
[00:43:21] Cindy: Okay.
[00:43:22] Marbree: Do you recall at any point receiving a piece of advice or a word of wisdom or a criticism that stuck with you and that you called to mind over the years?
[00:43:32] Cindy: One of the things that my dad always said, often said was. To get along in this world, you have to treat other people. Right. And I've always thought that treating people right, which I interpreted to mean fairly, and giving them a chance to explain themselves, even if I disagreed with them or was angry or something like that, has [00:44:00] served me very, very well.
[00:44:01] And so I think if you ask people that knew me at the university or even at church. People would probably say that I am very fair-minded and make decisions thoughtfully and not on the basis of, uh, favoritism or personal friendship or something like that. Honesty and integrity has been extraordinarily important.
[00:44:28] Marbree: Yeah, they're important values. Okay, I'm gonna jump. You moved well from Wisconsin, but before that you were in the northeast of the United States.
[00:44:36] Mm-hmm.
[00:44:36] And then you moved to Alabama in the 1970s.
[00:44:40] Cindy: Mm-hmm.
[00:44:41] Marbree: There's the religious element, and aside from that, it's still a very different culture. How was that transition?
[00:44:50] Cindy: Yeah. When you think about Madison, Wisconsin as being one of the hotbeds of liberalism, at that time I had hardly known any black people [00:45:00] before I moved here. I had one dear friend in college. I. I don't remember. I suppose there were some black people in Wisconsin School of Social work, but none of them do.
[00:45:11] I remember being close to, um, in Denver, oh, however that was after we moved here. My two best friends were very good, strong black women. Um, but understanding how to deal with that whole racial thing was a learning process. I'm not sure I could easily encapsulate it, but it's just different, you know, and to realize what's going on in the environment around me right now.
[00:45:39] We, we took a trip to Natchez a couple weeks ago, which was just blows your mind when you think about how that economy grew when you go to the place of the slave market. It's not true that the south is the only place where there was a lot of racial animus and difficulty. I know that, and [00:46:00] I've read enough about it to know, but I'm really pleased to know the south as well as I do, and I'm really strangely enough proud to know Alabama culture while at the same time deploring, uh, the positions of some of our.
[00:46:15] Crazy politicians and, and what they say and uh, what they believe. And, uh, I've always felt like, you know, being a social worker in Alabama was a way to bring a. Some of my thoughts and my values to, um, a place where they weren't there very much. I don't, I don't know how, if I'm expressing this correctly, but, um, you know, the, even the little things, you know, when we first moved here, you know, you couldn't go to the grocery store on Sunday or, you know, all that kind of stuff.
[00:46:48] That's not the issue. It, and, and, and it's so much fun to talk with people my age and have them. Be of my persuasion, but have them talk about, you know, when they were growing [00:47:00] up and if somebody was delivering a package to their home, they had black person would have to go to the back door. And, you know, just as they begin to realize what their youth was like.
[00:47:11] And, and so many people say, I never really knew any black people except our maid. And of course we loved her. So, you know, some of it is consciousness, some of it is. Total lack of self-consciousness about what was going on.
[00:47:27] Marbree: Yeah.
[00:47:28] Cindy: It's fascinating. Yeah, and I've taught classes like this. There's a great Episcopal curriculum about racism and multiculturalism, and I've sat in rooms with people who were saying things like this and trying to be kind and loving and move toward love and reconciliation.
[00:47:46] It's it's interest. I am very glad that I've lived in Alabama for 40 plus years.
[00:47:53] Marbree: Well, that's good. And that takes me to my next question, which is, as you look back, are there things in the course of your [00:48:00] life that if you could change, you would,
[00:48:02] Cindy: well, I guess we could start with, I would've liked to know my mother as an adult and interacted with her as an adult.
[00:48:09] That would've been really, really cool. So I wish I could change that. Um, I wish Dave didn't have Alzheimer's disease. Yeah. Um, these are things that are really totally outside of my control. Yeah. I regret that my divorce from my husband was, my first husband was so bitter, but it all turned out well. 'cause I think I've had a better life with Dave than I would've with him.
[00:48:36] But he and I still, you know, we share a grandchild and we're cooperative and in touch sort of.
[00:48:42] Marbree: Yeah. So then I have one final question, which I ask everyone. Okay. Which is, if you had all the world's attention for one minute, what would you ask or what would you say that you would like people to take to heart?
[00:48:55] Cindy: Be kind to one another.
[00:48:57] Marbree: That's a good one.[00:49:00]
[00:49:02] Thank you, Cindy, for being so open. Anyone bold enough to study abroad in high school has my immediate respect. After we spoke, I looked at the Rotary website and learned that they still coordinate exchange opportunities for young people. Some of the benefits listed for doing so include developing lifelong leadership skills, learning a new language and culture, and building lasting friendships with people from around the world.
[00:49:30] Without discounting the many other factors that played into Cindy's life. Sounds to me that she's a shining example of that. To those of you listening, thank you for joining us. If you enjoyed this, please leave a review in Spotify or Apple Podcasts and hit that follow button. These things help others find the podcast and they mean the world to me.
[00:49:52] Share this with anyone you think would love it or learn something from it, and keep coming back from more of The Words We've Heard. [00:50:00] This podcast would not be possible without the editing and production brilliance of Cori Orak, the inspiration of my parents, and a 2001 conversation with my grandmother.
[00:50:11] My thanks to you all.
[00:50:16] So what are the words we've heard be fair and truthful and upright in all that you do? To get along in this world, you have to treat other people, right? And the always important, be kind to one another.
[00:00:00] Marbree: Welcome to The Words We've Heard. This is Marbree Sullivan, and each week I sit down with a baby boomer to capture their stories, ask for a bit of advice, and hold on to the memories of the post World War II generation. Join me as we journey through everyday lives and extraordinary stories
[00:00:25] raised in Connecticut and Pennsylvania suburbs. Cindy broadened her horizons at a young age, spending her junior year of high school in the Netherlands, a member of Yale's first fully co-ed graduating class. Yes, that happened as recently as the early 1970s. Cindy went on to an impressive career in social work and academia while raising a family.
[00:00:50] I think we can safely say it's a far cry from the path an early college advisor suggested she pursue.[00:01:00]
[00:01:02] Hello, Cindy. Hello. It's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for sitting down with me.
[00:01:07] Cindy: I'm happy to do so.
[00:01:08] Marbree: When you think about your childhood, what comes to mind?
[00:01:12] Cindy: I had a, a beautiful, I almost idyllic childhood living in Avon, Connecticut. Um, we grew up. On the side of Avon Mountain, um, with, uh, forest behind US Meadows all around with, uh, sheep and cows and bulls and, um, a very, very quiet street where we could ride our bikes up and down the street without any trouble.
[00:01:38] So it seems like we were always outside running around. Uh, in great freedom, but in a way that, uh, there was no danger. And we were, when possible, we were outside all of the time and enjoying the, the meadows and the forests and the bikes and the playing hopscotch and, uh, touch football [00:02:00] and baseball and jump roping and it was very good.
[00:02:04] Do you have siblings? I have, uh, one sister, two years younger than I.
[00:02:08] Marbree: How did your family wind up in Avon, Connecticut?
[00:02:11] Cindy: My father worked, um, in Hartford and Avon was a suburb, so my parents moved there a couple years after I was born.
[00:02:20] Marbree: Did you have any extended family in the area?
[00:02:22] Cindy: No. My closest relatives were my grandparents and they, they lived in New Jersey and we went to visit them usually once or twice a month, and they would visit us in Connecticut once or twice a month.
[00:02:35] And my, uh, turtle grandparents lived in Fort Worth, Texas, and they would come once a year, um, on the train from Fort Worth. And we always looked forward to, to their being with us for, oh, I don't know, 10 days or so. Uh, each summer.
[00:02:54] Marbree: Did you ever take the train to visit them? No. No. Uh, I never, I never did.
[00:02:58] That's a
[00:02:58] Cindy: shame.
[00:02:59] Marbree: That would've been quite the [00:03:00] journey, I think it would've been. Were there lots of other kids in the area that you, you played with?
[00:03:05] Cindy: I wouldn't say lots. Um, maybe five or six. It was enough to, to kind of have a, a baseball game or a football game, and we did, we did all kinds of crazy things.
[00:03:15] We made up plays and invited our parents and had beauty pageants and. It was fun.
[00:03:22] Marbree: Yeah. Were you there all the way through high school?
[00:03:24] Cindy: No. Um. Before going into seventh grade, um, the federal government decided they needed the space where my dad's factory was for, uh, an interstate highway construction. And so we had to relocate and we relocated.
[00:03:43] Um, Northeastern Pennsylvania outside of Scranton and lived in, uh, in Clark Summit and, uh, Clark Green and that area through my college years.
[00:03:53] Marbree: How was it for you moving at that age?
[00:03:56] Cindy: Well, it was kind of scary, um, but [00:04:00] it worked out fine. Um, but it, you know, it's a deal of making new friends and learning about a new environment.
[00:04:07] Um, but I think we made the transition pretty well.
[00:04:11] Marbree: Did your mother work.
[00:04:12] Cindy: My mother was trained as a commercial artist, and so, uh, she did work, um, for most of the time between her training and, uh, the time she met my father. And after they got married, she did not work outside the home again. Um, the closest she came to that was, uh.
[00:04:32] Helping at a store where they had knitting materials and she helped teach other people how to knit and, uh, got yarn in return. That was the, the extent of her, um, employment outside the home.
[00:04:45] Marbree: Yeah. Did you work when you were in high school?
[00:04:48] Cindy: Uh, the only time that I worked was the summer before. College?
[00:04:55] College after my senior year. Oh, no, no, no, no more than once. I'm [00:05:00] sorry. A couple of summers and the most memorable summer oh, was when a, a number of us from the high school got on as factory workers at Tops bubblegum factory. And, uh, we would, we would get in the car together and, and commute. It was, oh, maybe a 20 minute ride to the factory.
[00:05:20] And, uh, we were involved with packaging tops, bubble gum.
[00:05:25] Marbree: How was that?
[00:05:26] Cindy: It was bizarre. It was absolutely bizarre. Uh, very, very boring work. And so, um, we would sometimes be together and we would amuse one another by reciting poetry or whatever we learned in school. And sometimes we did some naughty things.
[00:05:43] Like I remember one time finding like five. Cards that had the same baseball player and put them all together in one pack. So the kid who bought that pack would get five of some unknown baseball player. Um, the whole place was [00:06:00] suffused with sugar in the air. And so when you left, you'd be covered with, with a white filmy powder.
[00:06:09] And actually you breathed that, which wasn't very good. So there were some health issues about working there, but it was a summer job and it was something that I. A number of us did together.
[00:06:20] Marbree: Did you like school?
[00:06:22] Cindy: Yes. Yes, I did. Uh, throughout my life from kindergarten through PhD, I've always liked learning and, and participating in school.
[00:06:33] So how big was your high school? I think that in our senior graduating class, there were about 220 people.
[00:06:40] Marbree: Okay.
[00:06:41] Cindy: So it wasn't terribly big, but it was big enough that I didn't know everyone Well. I have known everybody's name, but not everyone. Well,
[00:06:51] Marbree: yeah. Did you play any sports or, I realize given that era there weren't so many available for girls, but were, were there any activities that you were part of?
[00:06:59] Cindy: [00:07:00] Um, well, I was for I think one year on the field hockey team. But again, I, I wasn't much of an athlete, um, and I didn't like all that running around in the cold air all that much. But the activity that I gravitated to was, um, high school debate class or, or team, I guess it was. And, uh, so I was, I was a high school debater and in my.
[00:07:25] Junior year I was an exchange student and went to live in the Netherlands, uh, for a year, uh, under the auspices of the Rotary Club. So I did miss one year of high school in the us.
[00:07:38] Marbree: How was that?
[00:07:40] Cindy: Well, I. I think in some ways I bit off more than I could too. I, I wanted to learn more about the world and learn about it being in a different place, and I certainly did that.
[00:07:52] But at the beginning I was pretty homesick. And of course, although most everyone in the Netherlands speaks [00:08:00] English, uh, in day-to-day life, you speak Dutch. So it took a while for me to get able, and I did become able to live my life. With the Dutch language and even dream in it. So that worked out. I attended a school which was called, uh, called a girls school actually, and they had a kind of a different curriculum in that they emphasized in a languages, of course you learned languages, uh, and um, literature.
[00:08:28] Also art history. And we took a crafts course and, um, drawing and painting and embroidery. And I guess I had a special program of study because I was going back to an American high school. So I took, I think it was trigonometry in the co-ed school that was adjacent to the girls school. So my, my female classmates didn't have to take the, the math that I took, but, um.
[00:08:58] I did that.
[00:08:59] Marbree: What other [00:09:00] differences were there between the girls and and the boys in terms of the education?
[00:09:05] Cindy: I. Well, the co-ed high there, there are actually two kinds of, at this time there were two kinds of co-ed high schools in, um, the Netherlands, and one was classical education. And I didn't do this fortunately, in addition to, uh.
[00:09:22] English and French and German. And Dutch. You also learned Latin and Greek, and you also had mathematics and science. Uh, and, and that schooling was the best ticket to, uh, a free university education. And then the next rank was the one that I went to, which was. All of those things except Latin Creek. And that would prepare you for, um, university education as well?
[00:09:52] I don't think the girls who went to the school that I went to, um, were eligible for university education. [00:10:00] Probably they couldn't have passed the entrance exams, but it was a really good preparation for being a wife and a mother. And that was how it was intended. Hmm. I expect I've changed a lot since then.
[00:10:11] I mean, that was the 1960s.
[00:10:14] Marbree: Yeah, I, I agree. I'm sure things have shifted. How many languages did you leave there speaking?
[00:10:19] Cindy: Well, I had begun studying French before I left the US and I continued that in the Netherlands. And then of course I learned Dutch and one of the teachers was very eager that I learned German.
[00:10:36] She gave me private tutoring lessons in German, and I was learning German from Dutch, and that's kind of challenging because they're very similar languages. And so when I went back to the US, um, I could converse in more or less in French. And German as well as Dutch and English. And when I went to college, [00:11:00] I ended up majoring in German.
[00:11:02] So it had longer term consequences than just this one woman wanting, wanting to teach that American girl German. So
[00:11:11] Marbree: do you remember any Dutch?
[00:11:12] Cindy: I do, but not, not nearly as much as the German, because obviously I supplemented that with, with four years of college. So
[00:11:19] Marbree: yeah. How was it socially for you during that year in the Netherlands?
[00:11:24] Cindy: Um, well, it was really quite different from going to high school in the us. First of all, there weren't any boys around really. So, you know, I had left a boyfriend and a, a kind of a dating scene and, you know, football games and parties and stuff, and it was wasn't very social for me at all. I was mostly hanging out with my family, my Dutch families, well, actually there were three.
[00:11:49] That was the, the plan was that you would live with three different families. During the 12 month period. And I did.
[00:11:56] Marbree: Yeah. That must have been tough, just thinking about that [00:12:00] social component that at that age of life is so important. Yeah. To fig, you know, figuring out who you are and how you relate to people and, and all of that.
[00:12:07] Cindy: Yep. It, it was, it was, but it was in, you know, in retrospect it was a, a very good learning experience and there were. Seven or eight of US American students who went to, um, the Netherlands together, and we were each in different cities, but the Rotary program arranged for us to have five or six different get togethers during the year.
[00:12:34] And so that was. An opportunity to be with American kids and compare the experiences that we had in the, in the different cities.
[00:12:42] Marbree: Yeah. And then how was it going back for your senior year?
[00:12:45] Cindy: Oh wow, that was wild. Um, first of all, the boyfriend that I had had before, uh, we just didn't click. I mean, it wasn't like it was a bad thing, it just didn't click.
[00:12:56] Um, so that relationship was over and [00:13:00] I. I think I put a lot of my energy into the, the debating team and would hang out with the, I guess there was only one other, one or two other female debaters. And so I mostly hung out with the guys who were on the debating team and um, somehow some of the things about American High School just didn't make any sense to me anymore, so I just kind of backed away from them.
[00:13:23] Marbree: Like what?
[00:13:24] Cindy: Senior class elections. I think people got really big into that. Not
[00:13:29] Marbree: things that are just so specific to the high school years and don't really mean anything in the long run.
[00:13:34] Cindy: Yeah,
[00:13:35] Marbree: yeah, I could see that. Before I move on to, to the college years, did you have a good relationship with your sister?
[00:13:41] Cindy: I. Yes, but not close. You know, we, we got along and, uh, there was another element in our family. Um, in our senior year we had exchange students from other places and, uh, there was a German exchange student who was very unhappy at her placement and she ended up living with us from [00:14:00] about November through the end of the school year.
[00:14:03] And we are still friends with her. We vacationed together in Europe. She's visited us here. She was actually a lot closer with my sister after graduation and my sister's family used to travel to Germany every, almost every summer and go sailing with her and her husband. And just recently, my sister spent a month with her in Germany.
[00:14:26] So that relationship continues. She's been here many times and we've vacationed together all over the country. She, my sister and I.
[00:14:34] Marbree: That's wonderful.
[00:14:35] Cindy: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:36] Marbree: Do you feel that studying abroad at that age changed your perspective for the rest of your life? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. How do you think it changed things for you?
[00:14:47] Cindy: Well, you just, you realize that even though the culture in the Netherlands is. More similar to the United States than say, you know, if I'd lived in Japan or India or something like that. People have different [00:15:00] perspectives on how things are and how things should be and what is appropriate. And uh, that gave me a much broader perspective on every aspect of living in the world, really.
[00:15:12] Um, yeah, to realize that people think, think differently about things that you take for granted as truth. Was, um, amazing.
[00:15:20] Marbree: Yeah, I agree. Yeah.
[00:15:21] Cindy: So there were some, you know, sad and difficult parts, but I'm very, very glad in retrospect that I did it. And of course, my love of seeing other places and learning about other places has, has continued and, uh, will continue.
[00:15:34] Marbree: Yeah. So then college. Was the decision to study German in any way related to hosting that German student?
[00:15:40] Cindy: Um, I suppose so. It was funny. I, I, uh, was at a, at a small liberal arts college, Swarthmore College outside of Pennsylvania, uh, for my first two years, and I must have taken. A proficiency test in German to see where I would place.
[00:15:57] And I've always thought the German [00:16:00] faculty there were very good and very nice people, but they were struggling because not too many people wanted to major or even take their classes. And when they found someone who was sort of eager or interested or potentially interested, they were very, very encouraging.
[00:16:18] And that was nice. And so, uh, apparently I scored well enough to, to start with literature and we always had very small classes, usually no more than seven or eight. And, uh, got to know our professors really well, and, um, they kept encouraging me and so I. Followed along. It's funny, I had initially thought, well, with all these languages, maybe I should study political science and go into the State Department.
[00:16:48] And that was my initial plan. And uh, then I went to see my political science advisor and sexism raised its ugly head when we started talking about, uh. Future [00:17:00] plans and he said, oh, with all that language knowledge, you would just be fantastic as a secretary and an import expert for him. And I just kind of looked at him and didn't wanna ever see him again.
[00:17:14] Marbree: I
[00:17:15] Cindy: don't blame
[00:17:15] Marbree: you.
[00:17:16] Cindy: And the political science classes that I was taking were really not that interesting. And so I guess I just landed where they liked me and appreciated me in the German department.
[00:17:27] Marbree: And with that transition, did you have any thought of what you might wanna do with the degree?
[00:17:32] Cindy: No. Um, you know, I was moving along there pretty firmly and, and my, my father, who was a very practical person, said, what do you expect to do, um, as a German major in the future?
[00:17:46] And the only thing I could think of was, was to teach German at the high school level. So. When I got to my junior and senior year, I qualified, uh, I took the necessary courses to qualify as a high school German [00:18:00] teacher. I actually did practice teaching, but I didn't end up there. But I, I was qualified. I could have, I could have done that after graduation from college.
[00:18:09] Marbree: And you said that you spent the first two years at Swarthmore?
[00:18:11] Cindy: I did. So
[00:18:12] Marbree: where did you go and why?
[00:18:14] Cindy: Um, I went to Yale University and that was the year that the Ivys or. At least some of them opened their doors to women as transfer students and as freshmen. And so I began to think that Swarthmore was a little small and isolated and I wanted to be in a bigger, more robust environment.
[00:18:35] And I applied to, I. Yale and to Princeton. And at the time I, well at the time I was dating a, a Princeton student, um, and decided and was accepted at both and decided that it would be better for me to be separate from his world. And so I, I went to Yale instead
[00:18:53] Marbree: and continued studying German.
[00:18:55] Cindy: Yeah, continued in German.
[00:18:56] Marbree: So does that mean that you would've been in the first class [00:19:00] of co-ed graduates from Yale? Yes,
[00:19:03] Cindy: that's correct. That's correct, and my boyfriend subsequently graduated from Princeton and we married and we were the first undergraduates from Princeton and Yale to marry.
[00:19:14] Marbree: Wow. That's amazing. All right, so you had the credentials to teach.
[00:19:19] And you, and you ultimately did not. So then what happened after you graduated?
[00:19:23] Cindy: Well, it, it started to happen before I graduated actually. I took a, a course in, um, I think it was existential psychology, and I really, really loved it. Thought, you know, that would be something I would really like to be, would be a clinical psychologist.
[00:19:40] And I talked to my teacher and she said, well. You know, to get into graduate school in psychology, you really have to have an undergraduate major in psychology. But there's something that's sort of similar that might be of interest to you, and that is social work. And the more I looked [00:20:00] into it, the more I thought that that was what I was going to do.
[00:20:03] So that's, uh, the story was that I, I moved with. My boyfriend who had a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, uh, to study philosophy. And we went out to Madison together and I worked as a secretary, um, for a year. Didn't have to use my language skills, um, in that position. And by that time I was a Wisconsin resident.
[00:20:29] And so then I entered the, um, social work program at the University of Wisconsin and earned my master's degree.
[00:20:35] Marbree: Okay. We'll carry on with that line in a moment, but I wanna back up.
[00:20:38] Cindy: Okay.
[00:20:39] Marbree: Man. Who became your husband? Yeah. You were dating at least by the time you were at Swarthmore? Yes. Where did you meet him?
[00:20:44] Cindy: It was a blind date. I don't know how it actually happened, but anyway, I took the little train up to Princeton and there he was, and we got along. Okay. And we kept on dating
[00:20:54] Marbree: and then So it was a long distance relationship from the start? Yes. Until you both graduated?
[00:20:59] Cindy: Yes. [00:21:00]
[00:21:00] Marbree: When did you get married? I.
[00:21:01] Cindy: Um, we graduated in June and then we moved together to Madison and lived together in Madison for the fall semester and went home to Pennsylvania and married.
[00:21:13] So it was about six months, um, after we graduated and about two years after we had met one another.
[00:21:19] Marbree: How did your families feel about the two of you moving together before being married?
[00:21:24] Cindy: I don't think there was any particular problem with that. Um, the summer between my junior and senior year in college was a very difficult one because my mother had a diagnosis of cancer and she died before I went into my senior year of college.
[00:21:44] And, you know, my dad did what he could to kind of keep everything going, but, uh, he didn't seem to, you know, he thought, you know, once you're outta college, it's your own life and you can decide what you wanna do.
[00:21:57] Marbree: I'm so sorry that you lost your mother.
[00:21:59] Cindy: [00:22:00] So there was no real objection. It was just kind of, well, that's what you gotta do, that's what you're gonna do.
[00:22:05] So.
[00:22:07] Marbree: How was it for you, if you don't mind me asking, and I'm very sorry that you lost your mother at, at such a young age. How was that for you?
[00:22:15] Cindy: Awful. You know, uh, I, I think it was the junior year at Yale and actually I think I was visiting Bob at Princeton, and I think my folks knew that. And they called me up one morning and, uh.
[00:22:30] I must have had Bob's phone number. There weren't any cell phones around in the dorm and uh said We'd like you to come down to Philadelphia. Your mom has cancer diagnosis and we need to talk about it. So I think my dad had known for a couple of months and he kind of brought us all to Philadelphia 'cause that's where she was being treated maybe.
[00:22:52] And it was just a horrible. Thing to realize, you know, that she had a terminal illness. But my sister and I were encouraged to continue [00:23:00] our spring semester at school and to go home when we could. And, um, he, I think, arranged for us to get jobs that summer so that we had, I think they were at businesses that his friends ran or something.
[00:23:15] So we were home all summer while she was in her. Last days. And, uh, actually she died really just a couple of days before school started in the fall. Oh. And so that senior year was, was, um, was tough and um,
[00:23:31] Marbree: yeah, I can imagine.
[00:23:32] Cindy: I graduated and I was with Bob and that was a, a comfort and um
[00:23:38] Marbree: hmm.
[00:23:39] Cindy: We got through it.
[00:23:40] Marbree: Yeah. That's tough. You went to Wisconsin, correct. Spent the year as a secretary and then started graduate school?
[00:23:47] Cindy: Correct.
[00:23:47] Marbree: And how was that? Did you enjoy it?
[00:23:49] Cindy: Yeah, it was great. I mean, we didn't, we didn't have any money to speak of, we were a hundred percent on our own. Both of our parents thought, you know, after they'd paid for college education, that that [00:24:00] was our thing.
[00:24:01] After that. That's a, it was great. It was fun. We were graduate students and living on nothing and having fun mostly.
[00:24:08] Marbree: Yeah,
[00:24:09] Cindy: and I liked what I was studying. I, I thought I had found something that, uh, really was me, the idea of helping other people. And I kind of got in on the ground floor of a aspect of social work that has subsequently obviously taken off.
[00:24:25] Uh, and that was, um, working with older adults. And at the beginning of my study there, it would be, you know, it would've been 71, 72 people didn't. Pay much attention to the need that there was going to be for people who were knowledgeable about services and opportunities for older people. So I was one of a really very few people in the country, even who was trained in that field.
[00:24:52] It's hard to believe now, but there weren't even textbooks for studying older adults at that time.
[00:24:59] Marbree: How long [00:25:00] were you in Madison?
[00:25:00] Cindy: Three years.
[00:25:01] Marbree: Okay. So basically the time it took for each of you to get through graduate degree?
[00:25:05] Cindy: Well, no, Bob had not finished his doctoral degree, but I got a job at the University of Alabama very shortly after I graduated and it was a um, job.
[00:25:18] Teaching in a school of social work, which was, you know, sort of remarkable. So he moved to Alabama with me and was basically writing his dissertation and commuting back to Wisconsin. I think one semester he stayed up there and I commuted up there. After he got his degree, he got a, a job in Alabama as well.
[00:25:38] So, uh, he was at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, which is about 50 miles from Tuscaloosa where I was.
[00:25:45] Marbree: So you went back to that long distance relationship again for a time there. Did you ever actually practice, or did you go directly into, other than the, you know, the training component?
[00:25:53] Cindy: That's the amazing thing.
[00:25:55] I really never had a full-time job as a social [00:26:00] worker practicing social work. I did a lot of supervision of students. My first year had groups of students who were working, um, with older adults in public housing here in, in Tuscaloosa, and I was advising them on what they were doing and spent a lot of time in the housing projects with them.
[00:26:18] But I was also teaching at night this introductory course in social work. With older adults, as I said, without a textbook. 'cause there really weren't any at the time. And so I was just kind of putting together articles and other stuff and loving it. And there was at the University of Alabama School of Social Work, a place called the Center for the Study of Aging, which I affiliated with and actually subsequently became, I guess they called me the assistant director of it and then.
[00:26:47] Some years later I was running it, so I, I was always in that field. I really liked my university life. I really did.
[00:26:55] Marbree: Were you there your entire career?
[00:26:57] Cindy: That's correct, yep. And, um, [00:27:00] I taught many different classes at the undergraduate level. I taught a bunch of courses in aging, one or two at the graduate level.
[00:27:08] But after a while, I was asked to serve as I. Acting dean of the school when the dean left, and then they made me the dean of the school. And so at age 39 and being the youngest member of the faculty, I became the boss and I was the dean for 13 years. And um, I got the respect and. Good cooperation of almost all of the faculty members.
[00:27:38] And of course, you know, I was recruiting new people and, you know, setting salaries, you know, all the things that a, an academic dean does. And, uh, then after 13 years I kind of thought, that's enough. I'm tired of this stuff. And I went back to a faculty position and wasn't exactly a faculty position because some folks asked me to [00:28:00] head the center for.
[00:28:01] Aging, and so I was doing a lot of grant writing and a lot of research. At that point, we haven't even gotten to my divorce and my second marriage, that was a period from about 2000 to 2008, and then I retired as a faculty member. Then they had another disastrous situation with leadership, and the university asked me to come back and serve as Dean again, which I did for four years before I retired.
[00:28:33] Retired. During that period, before I became the dean, it became really clear that the University of Alabama wanted to move forward in its reputation and competence, and so. All of the people who were teaching with master's degrees were encouraged to get doctoral degrees and a number of them in the school of social work weren't in a position [00:29:00] to go to another place and do that.
[00:29:02] So they ended up getting doctoral degrees in like educational leadership in the College of Education, things like that. But. I decided to get a doctoral degree in social work, and so I applied to all of the doctoral programs in social work in the United States, and the place that we settled on was, uh, the University of Denver.
[00:29:24] And so in, uh. Well, about 1980 we moved our family, um, which then included my two sons and my husband and my husband's daughter to Denver, and I was able to complete the coursework in one year and then came home. Took a leave of absent a, a second leave of absence and wrote my dissertation while we were living here.
[00:29:51] Yeah. And of course my husband was extremely supportive. He went on sabbatical that year and he's the one who, who took the nursing baby [00:30:00] when I had to go to class. And, you know, we tag teamed it through a PhD program.
[00:30:05] Marbree: Okay, so let's talk about that. And had you divorced? So is this a second husband or your first husband?
[00:30:10] Cindy: No, um, my first husband and I divorced in 1978. Shortly after the birth of our son. He was just a baby then like a year. You're too old. And then I came to know better a colleague at the University of Alabama and we ended up marrying, David is a sociologist and so we had a lot in common and he's the one who taught me how to become a researcher.
[00:30:33] Our nuclear family was, was his daughter and my son, and the son that was born to us subsequently.
[00:30:41] Marbree: And then you uprooted everyone for a year to go to Denver.
[00:30:44] Cindy: Correct.
[00:30:44] Marbree: Was your husband working?
[00:30:46] Cindy: He was on sabbatical. Okay. But he picked up a course or two at Denver so that he could add some money to the house.
[00:30:53] Marbree: Okay. So he's teaching a little bit. You are studying, were you also teaching as part of the PhD program?
[00:30:59] Cindy: Well, I had [00:31:00] a. Teaching assistantship and my teaching assistantship was supervision of students in, uh, their internships. So I would drive all over Denver and meet with them and their in-house supervisors and talk with them about their programs and what they were learning.
[00:31:16] Marbree: How on earth did you get through that year? Yeah,
[00:31:18] Cindy: we made it, he had an office in the sociology department, which wasn't too far from the school of social work, and he would teach from 12 to one. So he would bring the baby in. John and I would sit at his desk and Nurse John and he'd go teach sociology. And then when he was done, I'd hand him John and run across the street to my one o'clock class with milk dripping down my sweater.
[00:31:45] Marbree: Good teamwork.
[00:31:46] Cindy: Yep. Worked out fun. Oh yeah, Uhhuh. We have been real, real partners over the years because once we got back to Alabama then, and before I was asked to go into the deanship, he was [00:32:00] asked to be an associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. So he learned a lot about university policies and all that kind of stuff.
[00:32:09] And so I had a, a mentor at home and he was really at a different level than I was.
[00:32:15] Marbree: Yeah. That's incredibly fortunate to have a partnership that Strong.
[00:32:19] Cindy: Mm-hmm. Sure is.
[00:32:21] Marbree: Yeah. Through all those years, you've obviously interacted with students at the, at every stage of their progression.
[00:32:28] Cindy: Correct.
[00:32:28] Marbree: If you were talking to somebody who were at the start of their career in whatever field, any advice you'd give them on finding their way?
[00:32:36] Forward. Well, I
[00:32:37] Cindy: think it would probably be to be open-minded and try to learn as much as you can about the field that you're in or the organization that you're in, and the jobs that you are not doing at that organization, which are. Allied with what you're doing so that you have a, a good perspective on everybody that you can bring [00:33:00] to the table.
[00:33:00] And also to be keenly aware of the external environment. Uh, I guess I'm thinking of, you know, as a social worker, you wanna know about all the other agencies in your community and who does what so that you can quickly refer someone to something else. Um. The other thing is just to be fair and truthful and upright in all that you do, and not try to be duplicitous or sneaky or one-upping people.
[00:33:27] Um, try to be an honest person who works hard.
[00:33:31] Marbree: Those are all good things. Shifting gears, what things have you done outside of work over the years that. Brought you joy.
[00:33:37] Cindy: I do like to travel and, and Dave and I have been all over the place. And even when I was married to Bob, we took a, a summer with backpacks and U rail passes and went through Europe.
[00:33:49] So the travel is important, but the other things that I like to do include gardening and cooking. And I've done a fair amount of knitting. Uh, over the [00:34:00] years I like to have parties, uh, and cook for other people. Um, I like being around my family very much, and Dave and I really never had much of a social life.
[00:34:15] I. You know, like socializing with other couples because our evening time was, and weekend time was usually with the kids doing things with, you know, going to soccer games and basketball games and math competitions and all that kind of stuff. Um, and then the social life was mostly, uh, with the university.
[00:34:34] So, you know, we did see people and stuff, but it wasn't like we had a, a group of adult friends that we hung out with.
[00:34:41] Marbree: Yeah.
[00:34:41] Cindy: But it seemed like we were always busy and usually enjoying ourselves and, and we did put a lot of our energy into the children as they were growing up.
[00:34:50] Marbree: Since retirement, how have you been keeping busy?
[00:34:53] Cindy: Okay. I, um, began a course that's offered through the, um, episcopal church [00:35:00] called Education for Ministry back in 1980. It's a four year course. And I had virtually no affiliation with a church organization since I had entered college. And I yearned. And if you can imagine this, uh, I don't know how, what your background is about being in the south, but it is, it's so.
[00:35:23] Pervasively Christian and increasingly sort of Christian nationalist. And I didn't wanna have anything to do with that. But I did tell my kids that if they ever wanted to go to church, um, they should tell me and I would go with them. But there were some stipulations. I didn't want them to go any of these holy roller places where they're gonna scare 'em about hell and everything.
[00:35:45] So we ended up in an Episcopal church here in town. Which is very progressive and uh, I took this course and loved it and just learned, learned lots. And one of the guys who was teaching it was actually one of my fellow [00:36:00] deans at the University of Alabama. He was the dean of the College of Community Health Sciences and at about the third or fourth year, and he was also an ordained deacon in the Episcopal church.
[00:36:11] Now, he had a different life course than I did. I think he had been, you know, in church activities his entire life. But with our experience together in this four year course, he thought maybe that would be something I would like to do. And the more I learned about it, the more I thought, yeah, I think I could do this.
[00:36:29] Because being a deacon in the Episcopal church is sort of like being. A church social worker, um, that is the, um, definition of a deacon is a person who builds a bridge between the church and the world and brings the needs of the world to the church so the church can respond and then also represents the church.
[00:36:49] In the community in part by, you know, doing good and appropriate things. And I thought, well, this would be a great retirement career. [00:37:00] Now deacons are non depend, which means that you're a hundred percent volunteer. But as I decided more and more that I wanted to do this, it is over a period of three or four years actually, um, and I went through all the processes because this is.
[00:37:17] Episcopal church takes this very seriously. And so you have to, you know, go through a physical exam and a psychological exam, and then a, a weekend vetting experience at a church camp with your husband. Make sure that the match is correct and meeting with bishops and all, all this stuff. And then you're able to take a two year weekend course to become a deacon.
[00:37:41] So I did all this. More or less during my first retirement that is going through all this process and I really liked it. And then they asked me to come back and be the dean. And so I couldn't be a fully [00:38:00] time committed deacon, but I saw. What I was doing as a dean was appropriate to the deacon role. I, I, it's not like I wore a collar to the office, but I was enacting that role in a different way.
[00:38:14] And I did that for about, well, four, four years. And then I said, this is enough. I, I'm gonna really retire. And so I did. And then I got more involved in the diaconate role. And, uh, at about that time, the church I was going to got a new. Rector, who's a really fine man, and so he's just encouraged me to do whatever I want.
[00:38:36] Um, and so, you know, I preach, I visit people in the hospital. I run the outreach committee. I, for a long time, I kind of ran what they called the Deacon's Deli, which is a food pantry that's open every Tuesday morning, and low income people come in and get to select food. Um, I served on a couple of different.
[00:38:57] Boards of directors in the [00:39:00] community. So I've been, that's my second career. That's my post-retirement career. And that's, I'm still doing it. I preached two sermons last week and ought to be getting ready for another one. So that's, that's where I spend the bulk of my time. That's not at home. And then also, you know, there are obviously a lot of the other churches.
[00:39:19] In the state have deacons. And so we have a community of people that I've been working with and known for, you know, 15 or so years. And so that provides another source of community and social support. And we get together from time to time, conventions and weekends up at the camp and stuff like that. So that's mostly my post-retirement life.
[00:39:40] In addition to, um, doing stuff with kids, doing stuff with Dave and, um, traveling well, which is mostly doing stuff with Dave. So that sort of encapsulates my retirement activity and I, it's really, sometimes it's like more than 30 hours a week doing that stuff. So
[00:39:58] Marbree: I can imagine it sounds [00:40:00] like a pretty busy life.
[00:40:01] Cindy: Yeah. In the last couple of years, my life has gotten more different and more. Busy because Dave has a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, although he doesn't have a lot of the bad things that go along with Alzheimer's right now, he has absolutely no memory. You know, like I'll say, what did you have for lunch?
[00:40:20] I don't remember. Or I'll ask him to empty the dishwasher and. About half the things he puts in the wrong place. I can leave him alone for three or four hours safely, I think right now. But I do all the driving, I do all the cognitive stuff, and he's my partner, but he's not the partner that was writing articles for referee journals or, you know, talking with me about, uh, administrative issues at the university.
[00:40:50] He, he's just not. Oh,
[00:40:52] Marbree: I'm so sorry.
[00:40:53] Cindy: So my, this part of my retirement life for maybe the last, what [00:41:00] five years or so, has been gradually adapting to that reality of my life and, uh, trying to, you know, put one foot in front of the other every day.
[00:41:11] Marbree: Yeah.
[00:41:12] Cindy: And I have found that I've had to give up a number of the outside the house responsibilities that I had before.
[00:41:20] 'cause I was driving myself crazy and, uh, I didn't need to be doing, after a lot of people convinced me I didn't need to be doing all that many things. I agreed I didn't. And so life is better now.
[00:41:31] Marbree: Yeah. Hmm. I'm glad you've been able to step back and refocus. All right. I'm gonna ask a, a series of questions.
[00:41:37] Looking back, even though there are other things that I wanna ask about your life, so as you look back over the course of your life, were there decisions that you made that in the moment felt mundane or unimportant? But when you look at them now, you can see shaped the course of your life. No,
[00:41:53] Cindy: I mean, nothing comes to mind immediately.
[00:41:55] I think most of the decisions that I've made that have shaped the course of my life have been [00:42:00] deliberate and well thought through. Now, I'm gonna think about this obviously over the next couple of days, but, um, nothing comes to mind
[00:42:08] Marbree: as you look back. Who would you say are the handful of people who have been the most influential in your life?
[00:42:16] Cindy: Okay. And my father who set the stage for most of the values that I hold, my husband, Dave, there was a colleague at the School of Social Work, uh, who actually joined the faculty the same year as I did, and he was very influential. In my life in helping me to understand what it meant to be a faculty member and, and a researcher and a writer.
[00:42:41] And actually, um, he was an ordained minister before he became a college professor. And, you know, he always used to refer to me as a, as a heathen or a pagan or something like that because I didn't go to church. And he would probably be amused. He. He died several years ago to see [00:43:00] that. Now I'm a, a respected member of the clergy, um, but he was important in my life.
[00:43:06] Um, so, and then, uh, I think more recently, um, my current boss or rector Mark, uh, who's taught me a lot. So I guess that's four people. How many do you want? Yeah, that's
[00:43:21] Marbree: fine.
[00:43:21] Cindy: Okay.
[00:43:22] Marbree: Do you recall at any point receiving a piece of advice or a word of wisdom or a criticism that stuck with you and that you called to mind over the years?
[00:43:32] Cindy: One of the things that my dad always said, often said was. To get along in this world, you have to treat other people. Right. And I've always thought that treating people right, which I interpreted to mean fairly, and giving them a chance to explain themselves, even if I disagreed with them or was angry or something like that, has [00:44:00] served me very, very well.
[00:44:01] And so I think if you ask people that knew me at the university or even at church. People would probably say that I am very fair-minded and make decisions thoughtfully and not on the basis of, uh, favoritism or personal friendship or something like that. Honesty and integrity has been extraordinarily important.
[00:44:28] Marbree: Yeah, they're important values. Okay, I'm gonna jump. You moved well from Wisconsin, but before that you were in the northeast of the United States.
[00:44:36] Mm-hmm.
[00:44:36] And then you moved to Alabama in the 1970s.
[00:44:40] Cindy: Mm-hmm.
[00:44:41] Marbree: There's the religious element, and aside from that, it's still a very different culture. How was that transition?
[00:44:50] Cindy: Yeah. When you think about Madison, Wisconsin as being one of the hotbeds of liberalism, at that time I had hardly known any black people [00:45:00] before I moved here. I had one dear friend in college. I. I don't remember. I suppose there were some black people in Wisconsin School of Social work, but none of them do.
[00:45:11] I remember being close to, um, in Denver, oh, however that was after we moved here. My two best friends were very good, strong black women. Um, but understanding how to deal with that whole racial thing was a learning process. I'm not sure I could easily encapsulate it, but it's just different, you know, and to realize what's going on in the environment around me right now.
[00:45:39] We, we took a trip to Natchez a couple weeks ago, which was just blows your mind when you think about how that economy grew when you go to the place of the slave market. It's not true that the south is the only place where there was a lot of racial animus and difficulty. I know that, and [00:46:00] I've read enough about it to know, but I'm really pleased to know the south as well as I do, and I'm really strangely enough proud to know Alabama culture while at the same time deploring, uh, the positions of some of our.
[00:46:15] Crazy politicians and, and what they say and uh, what they believe. And, uh, I've always felt like, you know, being a social worker in Alabama was a way to bring a. Some of my thoughts and my values to, um, a place where they weren't there very much. I don't, I don't know how, if I'm expressing this correctly, but, um, you know, the, even the little things, you know, when we first moved here, you know, you couldn't go to the grocery store on Sunday or, you know, all that kind of stuff.
[00:46:48] That's not the issue. It, and, and, and it's so much fun to talk with people my age and have them. Be of my persuasion, but have them talk about, you know, when they were growing [00:47:00] up and if somebody was delivering a package to their home, they had black person would have to go to the back door. And, you know, just as they begin to realize what their youth was like.
[00:47:11] And, and so many people say, I never really knew any black people except our maid. And of course we loved her. So, you know, some of it is consciousness, some of it is. Total lack of self-consciousness about what was going on.
[00:47:27] Marbree: Yeah.
[00:47:28] Cindy: It's fascinating. Yeah, and I've taught classes like this. There's a great Episcopal curriculum about racism and multiculturalism, and I've sat in rooms with people who were saying things like this and trying to be kind and loving and move toward love and reconciliation.
[00:47:46] It's it's interest. I am very glad that I've lived in Alabama for 40 plus years.
[00:47:53] Marbree: Well, that's good. And that takes me to my next question, which is, as you look back, are there things in the course of your [00:48:00] life that if you could change, you would,
[00:48:02] Cindy: well, I guess we could start with, I would've liked to know my mother as an adult and interacted with her as an adult.
[00:48:09] That would've been really, really cool. So I wish I could change that. Um, I wish Dave didn't have Alzheimer's disease. Yeah. Um, these are things that are really totally outside of my control. Yeah. I regret that my divorce from my husband was, my first husband was so bitter, but it all turned out well. 'cause I think I've had a better life with Dave than I would've with him.
[00:48:36] But he and I still, you know, we share a grandchild and we're cooperative and in touch sort of.
[00:48:42] Marbree: Yeah. So then I have one final question, which I ask everyone. Okay. Which is, if you had all the world's attention for one minute, what would you ask or what would you say that you would like people to take to heart?
[00:48:55] Cindy: Be kind to one another.
[00:48:57] Marbree: That's a good one.[00:49:00]
[00:49:02] Thank you, Cindy, for being so open. Anyone bold enough to study abroad in high school has my immediate respect. After we spoke, I looked at the Rotary website and learned that they still coordinate exchange opportunities for young people. Some of the benefits listed for doing so include developing lifelong leadership skills, learning a new language and culture, and building lasting friendships with people from around the world.
[00:49:30] Without discounting the many other factors that played into Cindy's life. Sounds to me that she's a shining example of that. To those of you listening, thank you for joining us. If you enjoyed this, please leave a review in Spotify or Apple Podcasts and hit that follow button. These things help others find the podcast and they mean the world to me.
[00:49:52] Share this with anyone you think would love it or learn something from it, and keep coming back from more of The Words We've Heard. [00:50:00] This podcast would not be possible without the editing and production brilliance of Cori Orak, the inspiration of my parents, and a 2001 conversation with my grandmother.
[00:50:11] My thanks to you all.
[00:50:16] So what are the words we've heard be fair and truthful and upright in all that you do? To get along in this world, you have to treat other people, right? And the always important, be kind to one another.
[00:00:00] Marbree: Welcome to The Words We've Heard. This is Marbree Sullivan, and each week I sit down with a baby boomer to capture their stories, ask for a bit of advice, and hold on to the memories of the post World War II generation. Join me as we journey through everyday lives and extraordinary stories
[00:00:25] raised in Connecticut and Pennsylvania suburbs. Cindy broadened her horizons at a young age, spending her junior year of high school in the Netherlands, a member of Yale's first fully co-ed graduating class. Yes, that happened as recently as the early 1970s. Cindy went on to an impressive career in social work and academia while raising a family.
[00:00:50] I think we can safely say it's a far cry from the path an early college advisor suggested she pursue.[00:01:00]
[00:01:02] Hello, Cindy. Hello. It's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for sitting down with me.
[00:01:07] Cindy: I'm happy to do so.
[00:01:08] Marbree: When you think about your childhood, what comes to mind?
[00:01:12] Cindy: I had a, a beautiful, I almost idyllic childhood living in Avon, Connecticut. Um, we grew up. On the side of Avon Mountain, um, with, uh, forest behind US Meadows all around with, uh, sheep and cows and bulls and, um, a very, very quiet street where we could ride our bikes up and down the street without any trouble.
[00:01:38] So it seems like we were always outside running around. Uh, in great freedom, but in a way that, uh, there was no danger. And we were, when possible, we were outside all of the time and enjoying the, the meadows and the forests and the bikes and the playing hopscotch and, uh, touch football [00:02:00] and baseball and jump roping and it was very good.
[00:02:04] Do you have siblings? I have, uh, one sister, two years younger than I.
[00:02:08] Marbree: How did your family wind up in Avon, Connecticut?
[00:02:11] Cindy: My father worked, um, in Hartford and Avon was a suburb, so my parents moved there a couple years after I was born.
[00:02:20] Marbree: Did you have any extended family in the area?
[00:02:22] Cindy: No. My closest relatives were my grandparents and they, they lived in New Jersey and we went to visit them usually once or twice a month, and they would visit us in Connecticut once or twice a month.
[00:02:35] And my, uh, turtle grandparents lived in Fort Worth, Texas, and they would come once a year, um, on the train from Fort Worth. And we always looked forward to, to their being with us for, oh, I don't know, 10 days or so. Uh, each summer.
[00:02:54] Marbree: Did you ever take the train to visit them? No. No. Uh, I never, I never did.
[00:02:58] That's a
[00:02:58] Cindy: shame.
[00:02:59] Marbree: That would've been quite the [00:03:00] journey, I think it would've been. Were there lots of other kids in the area that you, you played with?
[00:03:05] Cindy: I wouldn't say lots. Um, maybe five or six. It was enough to, to kind of have a, a baseball game or a football game, and we did, we did all kinds of crazy things.
[00:03:15] We made up plays and invited our parents and had beauty pageants and. It was fun.
[00:03:22] Marbree: Yeah. Were you there all the way through high school?
[00:03:24] Cindy: No. Um. Before going into seventh grade, um, the federal government decided they needed the space where my dad's factory was for, uh, an interstate highway construction. And so we had to relocate and we relocated.
[00:03:43] Um, Northeastern Pennsylvania outside of Scranton and lived in, uh, in Clark Summit and, uh, Clark Green and that area through my college years.
[00:03:53] Marbree: How was it for you moving at that age?
[00:03:56] Cindy: Well, it was kind of scary, um, but [00:04:00] it worked out fine. Um, but it, you know, it's a deal of making new friends and learning about a new environment.
[00:04:07] Um, but I think we made the transition pretty well.
[00:04:11] Marbree: Did your mother work.
[00:04:12] Cindy: My mother was trained as a commercial artist, and so, uh, she did work, um, for most of the time between her training and, uh, the time she met my father. And after they got married, she did not work outside the home again. Um, the closest she came to that was, uh.
[00:04:32] Helping at a store where they had knitting materials and she helped teach other people how to knit and, uh, got yarn in return. That was the, the extent of her, um, employment outside the home.
[00:04:45] Marbree: Yeah. Did you work when you were in high school?
[00:04:48] Cindy: Uh, the only time that I worked was the summer before. College?
[00:04:55] College after my senior year. Oh, no, no, no, no more than once. I'm [00:05:00] sorry. A couple of summers and the most memorable summer oh, was when a, a number of us from the high school got on as factory workers at Tops bubblegum factory. And, uh, we would, we would get in the car together and, and commute. It was, oh, maybe a 20 minute ride to the factory.
[00:05:20] And, uh, we were involved with packaging tops, bubble gum.
[00:05:25] Marbree: How was that?
[00:05:26] Cindy: It was bizarre. It was absolutely bizarre. Uh, very, very boring work. And so, um, we would sometimes be together and we would amuse one another by reciting poetry or whatever we learned in school. And sometimes we did some naughty things.
[00:05:43] Like I remember one time finding like five. Cards that had the same baseball player and put them all together in one pack. So the kid who bought that pack would get five of some unknown baseball player. Um, the whole place was [00:06:00] suffused with sugar in the air. And so when you left, you'd be covered with, with a white filmy powder.
[00:06:09] And actually you breathed that, which wasn't very good. So there were some health issues about working there, but it was a summer job and it was something that I. A number of us did together.
[00:06:20] Marbree: Did you like school?
[00:06:22] Cindy: Yes. Yes, I did. Uh, throughout my life from kindergarten through PhD, I've always liked learning and, and participating in school.
[00:06:33] So how big was your high school? I think that in our senior graduating class, there were about 220 people.
[00:06:40] Marbree: Okay.
[00:06:41] Cindy: So it wasn't terribly big, but it was big enough that I didn't know everyone Well. I have known everybody's name, but not everyone. Well,
[00:06:51] Marbree: yeah. Did you play any sports or, I realize given that era there weren't so many available for girls, but were, were there any activities that you were part of?
[00:06:59] Cindy: [00:07:00] Um, well, I was for I think one year on the field hockey team. But again, I, I wasn't much of an athlete, um, and I didn't like all that running around in the cold air all that much. But the activity that I gravitated to was, um, high school debate class or, or team, I guess it was. And, uh, so I was, I was a high school debater and in my.
[00:07:25] Junior year I was an exchange student and went to live in the Netherlands, uh, for a year, uh, under the auspices of the Rotary Club. So I did miss one year of high school in the us.
[00:07:38] Marbree: How was that?
[00:07:40] Cindy: Well, I. I think in some ways I bit off more than I could too. I, I wanted to learn more about the world and learn about it being in a different place, and I certainly did that.
[00:07:52] But at the beginning I was pretty homesick. And of course, although most everyone in the Netherlands speaks [00:08:00] English, uh, in day-to-day life, you speak Dutch. So it took a while for me to get able, and I did become able to live my life. With the Dutch language and even dream in it. So that worked out. I attended a school which was called, uh, called a girls school actually, and they had a kind of a different curriculum in that they emphasized in a languages, of course you learned languages, uh, and um, literature.
[00:08:28] Also art history. And we took a crafts course and, um, drawing and painting and embroidery. And I guess I had a special program of study because I was going back to an American high school. So I took, I think it was trigonometry in the co-ed school that was adjacent to the girls school. So my, my female classmates didn't have to take the, the math that I took, but, um.
[00:08:58] I did that.
[00:08:59] Marbree: What other [00:09:00] differences were there between the girls and and the boys in terms of the education?
[00:09:05] Cindy: I. Well, the co-ed high there, there are actually two kinds of, at this time there were two kinds of co-ed high schools in, um, the Netherlands, and one was classical education. And I didn't do this fortunately, in addition to, uh.
[00:09:22] English and French and German. And Dutch. You also learned Latin and Greek, and you also had mathematics and science. Uh, and, and that schooling was the best ticket to, uh, a free university education. And then the next rank was the one that I went to, which was. All of those things except Latin Creek. And that would prepare you for, um, university education as well?
[00:09:52] I don't think the girls who went to the school that I went to, um, were eligible for university education. [00:10:00] Probably they couldn't have passed the entrance exams, but it was a really good preparation for being a wife and a mother. And that was how it was intended. Hmm. I expect I've changed a lot since then.
[00:10:11] I mean, that was the 1960s.
[00:10:14] Marbree: Yeah, I, I agree. I'm sure things have shifted. How many languages did you leave there speaking?
[00:10:19] Cindy: Well, I had begun studying French before I left the US and I continued that in the Netherlands. And then of course I learned Dutch and one of the teachers was very eager that I learned German.
[00:10:36] She gave me private tutoring lessons in German, and I was learning German from Dutch, and that's kind of challenging because they're very similar languages. And so when I went back to the US, um, I could converse in more or less in French. And German as well as Dutch and English. And when I went to college, [00:11:00] I ended up majoring in German.
[00:11:02] So it had longer term consequences than just this one woman wanting, wanting to teach that American girl German. So
[00:11:11] Marbree: do you remember any Dutch?
[00:11:12] Cindy: I do, but not, not nearly as much as the German, because obviously I supplemented that with, with four years of college. So
[00:11:19] Marbree: yeah. How was it socially for you during that year in the Netherlands?
[00:11:24] Cindy: Um, well, it was really quite different from going to high school in the us. First of all, there weren't any boys around really. So, you know, I had left a boyfriend and a, a kind of a dating scene and, you know, football games and parties and stuff, and it was wasn't very social for me at all. I was mostly hanging out with my family, my Dutch families, well, actually there were three.
[00:11:49] That was the, the plan was that you would live with three different families. During the 12 month period. And I did.
[00:11:56] Marbree: Yeah. That must have been tough, just thinking about that [00:12:00] social component that at that age of life is so important. Yeah. To fig, you know, figuring out who you are and how you relate to people and, and all of that.
[00:12:07] Cindy: Yep. It, it was, it was, but it was in, you know, in retrospect it was a, a very good learning experience and there were. Seven or eight of US American students who went to, um, the Netherlands together, and we were each in different cities, but the Rotary program arranged for us to have five or six different get togethers during the year.
[00:12:34] And so that was. An opportunity to be with American kids and compare the experiences that we had in the, in the different cities.
[00:12:42] Marbree: Yeah. And then how was it going back for your senior year?
[00:12:45] Cindy: Oh wow, that was wild. Um, first of all, the boyfriend that I had had before, uh, we just didn't click. I mean, it wasn't like it was a bad thing, it just didn't click.
[00:12:56] Um, so that relationship was over and [00:13:00] I. I think I put a lot of my energy into the, the debating team and would hang out with the, I guess there was only one other, one or two other female debaters. And so I mostly hung out with the guys who were on the debating team and um, somehow some of the things about American High School just didn't make any sense to me anymore, so I just kind of backed away from them.
[00:13:23] Marbree: Like what?
[00:13:24] Cindy: Senior class elections. I think people got really big into that. Not
[00:13:29] Marbree: things that are just so specific to the high school years and don't really mean anything in the long run.
[00:13:34] Cindy: Yeah,
[00:13:35] Marbree: yeah, I could see that. Before I move on to, to the college years, did you have a good relationship with your sister?
[00:13:41] Cindy: I. Yes, but not close. You know, we, we got along and, uh, there was another element in our family. Um, in our senior year we had exchange students from other places and, uh, there was a German exchange student who was very unhappy at her placement and she ended up living with us from [00:14:00] about November through the end of the school year.
[00:14:03] And we are still friends with her. We vacationed together in Europe. She's visited us here. She was actually a lot closer with my sister after graduation and my sister's family used to travel to Germany every, almost every summer and go sailing with her and her husband. And just recently, my sister spent a month with her in Germany.
[00:14:26] So that relationship continues. She's been here many times and we've vacationed together all over the country. She, my sister and I.
[00:14:34] Marbree: That's wonderful.
[00:14:35] Cindy: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:36] Marbree: Do you feel that studying abroad at that age changed your perspective for the rest of your life? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. How do you think it changed things for you?
[00:14:47] Cindy: Well, you just, you realize that even though the culture in the Netherlands is. More similar to the United States than say, you know, if I'd lived in Japan or India or something like that. People have different [00:15:00] perspectives on how things are and how things should be and what is appropriate. And uh, that gave me a much broader perspective on every aspect of living in the world, really.
[00:15:12] Um, yeah, to realize that people think, think differently about things that you take for granted as truth. Was, um, amazing.
[00:15:20] Marbree: Yeah, I agree. Yeah.
[00:15:21] Cindy: So there were some, you know, sad and difficult parts, but I'm very, very glad in retrospect that I did it. And of course, my love of seeing other places and learning about other places has, has continued and, uh, will continue.
[00:15:34] Marbree: Yeah. So then college. Was the decision to study German in any way related to hosting that German student?
[00:15:40] Cindy: Um, I suppose so. It was funny. I, I, uh, was at a, at a small liberal arts college, Swarthmore College outside of Pennsylvania, uh, for my first two years, and I must have taken. A proficiency test in German to see where I would place.
[00:15:57] And I've always thought the German [00:16:00] faculty there were very good and very nice people, but they were struggling because not too many people wanted to major or even take their classes. And when they found someone who was sort of eager or interested or potentially interested, they were very, very encouraging.
[00:16:18] And that was nice. And so, uh, apparently I scored well enough to, to start with literature and we always had very small classes, usually no more than seven or eight. And, uh, got to know our professors really well, and, um, they kept encouraging me and so I. Followed along. It's funny, I had initially thought, well, with all these languages, maybe I should study political science and go into the State Department.
[00:16:48] And that was my initial plan. And uh, then I went to see my political science advisor and sexism raised its ugly head when we started talking about, uh. Future [00:17:00] plans and he said, oh, with all that language knowledge, you would just be fantastic as a secretary and an import expert for him. And I just kind of looked at him and didn't wanna ever see him again.
[00:17:14] Marbree: I
[00:17:15] Cindy: don't blame
[00:17:15] Marbree: you.
[00:17:16] Cindy: And the political science classes that I was taking were really not that interesting. And so I guess I just landed where they liked me and appreciated me in the German department.
[00:17:27] Marbree: And with that transition, did you have any thought of what you might wanna do with the degree?
[00:17:32] Cindy: No. Um, you know, I was moving along there pretty firmly and, and my, my father, who was a very practical person, said, what do you expect to do, um, as a German major in the future?
[00:17:46] And the only thing I could think of was, was to teach German at the high school level. So. When I got to my junior and senior year, I qualified, uh, I took the necessary courses to qualify as a high school German [00:18:00] teacher. I actually did practice teaching, but I didn't end up there. But I, I was qualified. I could have, I could have done that after graduation from college.
[00:18:09] Marbree: And you said that you spent the first two years at Swarthmore?
[00:18:11] Cindy: I did. So
[00:18:12] Marbree: where did you go and why?
[00:18:14] Cindy: Um, I went to Yale University and that was the year that the Ivys or. At least some of them opened their doors to women as transfer students and as freshmen. And so I began to think that Swarthmore was a little small and isolated and I wanted to be in a bigger, more robust environment.
[00:18:35] And I applied to, I. Yale and to Princeton. And at the time I, well at the time I was dating a, a Princeton student, um, and decided and was accepted at both and decided that it would be better for me to be separate from his world. And so I, I went to Yale instead
[00:18:53] Marbree: and continued studying German.
[00:18:55] Cindy: Yeah, continued in German.
[00:18:56] Marbree: So does that mean that you would've been in the first class [00:19:00] of co-ed graduates from Yale? Yes,
[00:19:03] Cindy: that's correct. That's correct, and my boyfriend subsequently graduated from Princeton and we married and we were the first undergraduates from Princeton and Yale to marry.
[00:19:14] Marbree: Wow. That's amazing. All right, so you had the credentials to teach.
[00:19:19] And you, and you ultimately did not. So then what happened after you graduated?
[00:19:23] Cindy: Well, it, it started to happen before I graduated actually. I took a, a course in, um, I think it was existential psychology, and I really, really loved it. Thought, you know, that would be something I would really like to be, would be a clinical psychologist.
[00:19:40] And I talked to my teacher and she said, well. You know, to get into graduate school in psychology, you really have to have an undergraduate major in psychology. But there's something that's sort of similar that might be of interest to you, and that is social work. And the more I looked [00:20:00] into it, the more I thought that that was what I was going to do.
[00:20:03] So that's, uh, the story was that I, I moved with. My boyfriend who had a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, uh, to study philosophy. And we went out to Madison together and I worked as a secretary, um, for a year. Didn't have to use my language skills, um, in that position. And by that time I was a Wisconsin resident.
[00:20:29] And so then I entered the, um, social work program at the University of Wisconsin and earned my master's degree.
[00:20:35] Marbree: Okay. We'll carry on with that line in a moment, but I wanna back up.
[00:20:38] Cindy: Okay.
[00:20:39] Marbree: Man. Who became your husband? Yeah. You were dating at least by the time you were at Swarthmore? Yes. Where did you meet him?
[00:20:44] Cindy: It was a blind date. I don't know how it actually happened, but anyway, I took the little train up to Princeton and there he was, and we got along. Okay. And we kept on dating
[00:20:54] Marbree: and then So it was a long distance relationship from the start? Yes. Until you both graduated?
[00:20:59] Cindy: Yes. [00:21:00]
[00:21:00] Marbree: When did you get married? I.
[00:21:01] Cindy: Um, we graduated in June and then we moved together to Madison and lived together in Madison for the fall semester and went home to Pennsylvania and married.
[00:21:13] So it was about six months, um, after we graduated and about two years after we had met one another.
[00:21:19] Marbree: How did your families feel about the two of you moving together before being married?
[00:21:24] Cindy: I don't think there was any particular problem with that. Um, the summer between my junior and senior year in college was a very difficult one because my mother had a diagnosis of cancer and she died before I went into my senior year of college.
[00:21:44] And, you know, my dad did what he could to kind of keep everything going, but, uh, he didn't seem to, you know, he thought, you know, once you're outta college, it's your own life and you can decide what you wanna do.
[00:21:57] Marbree: I'm so sorry that you lost your mother.
[00:21:59] Cindy: [00:22:00] So there was no real objection. It was just kind of, well, that's what you gotta do, that's what you're gonna do.
[00:22:05] So.
[00:22:07] Marbree: How was it for you, if you don't mind me asking, and I'm very sorry that you lost your mother at, at such a young age. How was that for you?
[00:22:15] Cindy: Awful. You know, uh, I, I think it was the junior year at Yale and actually I think I was visiting Bob at Princeton, and I think my folks knew that. And they called me up one morning and, uh.
[00:22:30] I must have had Bob's phone number. There weren't any cell phones around in the dorm and uh said We'd like you to come down to Philadelphia. Your mom has cancer diagnosis and we need to talk about it. So I think my dad had known for a couple of months and he kind of brought us all to Philadelphia 'cause that's where she was being treated maybe.
[00:22:52] And it was just a horrible. Thing to realize, you know, that she had a terminal illness. But my sister and I were encouraged to continue [00:23:00] our spring semester at school and to go home when we could. And, um, he, I think, arranged for us to get jobs that summer so that we had, I think they were at businesses that his friends ran or something.
[00:23:15] So we were home all summer while she was in her. Last days. And, uh, actually she died really just a couple of days before school started in the fall. Oh. And so that senior year was, was, um, was tough and um,
[00:23:31] Marbree: yeah, I can imagine.
[00:23:32] Cindy: I graduated and I was with Bob and that was a, a comfort and um
[00:23:38] Marbree: hmm.
[00:23:39] Cindy: We got through it.
[00:23:40] Marbree: Yeah. That's tough. You went to Wisconsin, correct. Spent the year as a secretary and then started graduate school?
[00:23:47] Cindy: Correct.
[00:23:47] Marbree: And how was that? Did you enjoy it?
[00:23:49] Cindy: Yeah, it was great. I mean, we didn't, we didn't have any money to speak of, we were a hundred percent on our own. Both of our parents thought, you know, after they'd paid for college education, that that [00:24:00] was our thing.
[00:24:01] After that. That's a, it was great. It was fun. We were graduate students and living on nothing and having fun mostly.
[00:24:08] Marbree: Yeah,
[00:24:09] Cindy: and I liked what I was studying. I, I thought I had found something that, uh, really was me, the idea of helping other people. And I kind of got in on the ground floor of a aspect of social work that has subsequently obviously taken off.
[00:24:25] Uh, and that was, um, working with older adults. And at the beginning of my study there, it would be, you know, it would've been 71, 72 people didn't. Pay much attention to the need that there was going to be for people who were knowledgeable about services and opportunities for older people. So I was one of a really very few people in the country, even who was trained in that field.
[00:24:52] It's hard to believe now, but there weren't even textbooks for studying older adults at that time.
[00:24:59] Marbree: How long [00:25:00] were you in Madison?
[00:25:00] Cindy: Three years.
[00:25:01] Marbree: Okay. So basically the time it took for each of you to get through graduate degree?
[00:25:05] Cindy: Well, no, Bob had not finished his doctoral degree, but I got a job at the University of Alabama very shortly after I graduated and it was a um, job.
[00:25:18] Teaching in a school of social work, which was, you know, sort of remarkable. So he moved to Alabama with me and was basically writing his dissertation and commuting back to Wisconsin. I think one semester he stayed up there and I commuted up there. After he got his degree, he got a, a job in Alabama as well.
[00:25:38] So, uh, he was at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, which is about 50 miles from Tuscaloosa where I was.
[00:25:45] Marbree: So you went back to that long distance relationship again for a time there. Did you ever actually practice, or did you go directly into, other than the, you know, the training component?
[00:25:53] Cindy: That's the amazing thing.
[00:25:55] I really never had a full-time job as a social [00:26:00] worker practicing social work. I did a lot of supervision of students. My first year had groups of students who were working, um, with older adults in public housing here in, in Tuscaloosa, and I was advising them on what they were doing and spent a lot of time in the housing projects with them.
[00:26:18] But I was also teaching at night this introductory course in social work. With older adults, as I said, without a textbook. 'cause there really weren't any at the time. And so I was just kind of putting together articles and other stuff and loving it. And there was at the University of Alabama School of Social Work, a place called the Center for the Study of Aging, which I affiliated with and actually subsequently became, I guess they called me the assistant director of it and then.
[00:26:47] Some years later I was running it, so I, I was always in that field. I really liked my university life. I really did.
[00:26:55] Marbree: Were you there your entire career?
[00:26:57] Cindy: That's correct, yep. And, um, [00:27:00] I taught many different classes at the undergraduate level. I taught a bunch of courses in aging, one or two at the graduate level.
[00:27:08] But after a while, I was asked to serve as I. Acting dean of the school when the dean left, and then they made me the dean of the school. And so at age 39 and being the youngest member of the faculty, I became the boss and I was the dean for 13 years. And um, I got the respect and. Good cooperation of almost all of the faculty members.
[00:27:38] And of course, you know, I was recruiting new people and, you know, setting salaries, you know, all the things that a, an academic dean does. And, uh, then after 13 years I kind of thought, that's enough. I'm tired of this stuff. And I went back to a faculty position and wasn't exactly a faculty position because some folks asked me to [00:28:00] head the center for.
[00:28:01] Aging, and so I was doing a lot of grant writing and a lot of research. At that point, we haven't even gotten to my divorce and my second marriage, that was a period from about 2000 to 2008, and then I retired as a faculty member. Then they had another disastrous situation with leadership, and the university asked me to come back and serve as Dean again, which I did for four years before I retired.
[00:28:33] Retired. During that period, before I became the dean, it became really clear that the University of Alabama wanted to move forward in its reputation and competence, and so. All of the people who were teaching with master's degrees were encouraged to get doctoral degrees and a number of them in the school of social work weren't in a position [00:29:00] to go to another place and do that.
[00:29:02] So they ended up getting doctoral degrees in like educational leadership in the College of Education, things like that. But. I decided to get a doctoral degree in social work, and so I applied to all of the doctoral programs in social work in the United States, and the place that we settled on was, uh, the University of Denver.
[00:29:24] And so in, uh. Well, about 1980 we moved our family, um, which then included my two sons and my husband and my husband's daughter to Denver, and I was able to complete the coursework in one year and then came home. Took a leave of absent a, a second leave of absence and wrote my dissertation while we were living here.
[00:29:51] Yeah. And of course my husband was extremely supportive. He went on sabbatical that year and he's the one who, who took the nursing baby [00:30:00] when I had to go to class. And, you know, we tag teamed it through a PhD program.
[00:30:05] Marbree: Okay, so let's talk about that. And had you divorced? So is this a second husband or your first husband?
[00:30:10] Cindy: No, um, my first husband and I divorced in 1978. Shortly after the birth of our son. He was just a baby then like a year. You're too old. And then I came to know better a colleague at the University of Alabama and we ended up marrying, David is a sociologist and so we had a lot in common and he's the one who taught me how to become a researcher.
[00:30:33] Our nuclear family was, was his daughter and my son, and the son that was born to us subsequently.
[00:30:41] Marbree: And then you uprooted everyone for a year to go to Denver.
[00:30:44] Cindy: Correct.
[00:30:44] Marbree: Was your husband working?
[00:30:46] Cindy: He was on sabbatical. Okay. But he picked up a course or two at Denver so that he could add some money to the house.
[00:30:53] Marbree: Okay. So he's teaching a little bit. You are studying, were you also teaching as part of the PhD program?
[00:30:59] Cindy: Well, I had [00:31:00] a. Teaching assistantship and my teaching assistantship was supervision of students in, uh, their internships. So I would drive all over Denver and meet with them and their in-house supervisors and talk with them about their programs and what they were learning.
[00:31:16] Marbree: How on earth did you get through that year? Yeah,
[00:31:18] Cindy: we made it, he had an office in the sociology department, which wasn't too far from the school of social work, and he would teach from 12 to one. So he would bring the baby in. John and I would sit at his desk and Nurse John and he'd go teach sociology. And then when he was done, I'd hand him John and run across the street to my one o'clock class with milk dripping down my sweater.
[00:31:45] Marbree: Good teamwork.
[00:31:46] Cindy: Yep. Worked out fun. Oh yeah, Uhhuh. We have been real, real partners over the years because once we got back to Alabama then, and before I was asked to go into the deanship, he was [00:32:00] asked to be an associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. So he learned a lot about university policies and all that kind of stuff.
[00:32:09] And so I had a, a mentor at home and he was really at a different level than I was.
[00:32:15] Marbree: Yeah. That's incredibly fortunate to have a partnership that Strong.
[00:32:19] Cindy: Mm-hmm. Sure is.
[00:32:21] Marbree: Yeah. Through all those years, you've obviously interacted with students at the, at every stage of their progression.
[00:32:28] Cindy: Correct.
[00:32:28] Marbree: If you were talking to somebody who were at the start of their career in whatever field, any advice you'd give them on finding their way?
[00:32:36] Forward. Well, I
[00:32:37] Cindy: think it would probably be to be open-minded and try to learn as much as you can about the field that you're in or the organization that you're in, and the jobs that you are not doing at that organization, which are. Allied with what you're doing so that you have a, a good perspective on everybody that you can bring [00:33:00] to the table.
[00:33:00] And also to be keenly aware of the external environment. Uh, I guess I'm thinking of, you know, as a social worker, you wanna know about all the other agencies in your community and who does what so that you can quickly refer someone to something else. Um. The other thing is just to be fair and truthful and upright in all that you do, and not try to be duplicitous or sneaky or one-upping people.
[00:33:27] Um, try to be an honest person who works hard.
[00:33:31] Marbree: Those are all good things. Shifting gears, what things have you done outside of work over the years that. Brought you joy.
[00:33:37] Cindy: I do like to travel and, and Dave and I have been all over the place. And even when I was married to Bob, we took a, a summer with backpacks and U rail passes and went through Europe.
[00:33:49] So the travel is important, but the other things that I like to do include gardening and cooking. And I've done a fair amount of knitting. Uh, over the [00:34:00] years I like to have parties, uh, and cook for other people. Um, I like being around my family very much, and Dave and I really never had much of a social life.
[00:34:15] I. You know, like socializing with other couples because our evening time was, and weekend time was usually with the kids doing things with, you know, going to soccer games and basketball games and math competitions and all that kind of stuff. Um, and then the social life was mostly, uh, with the university.
[00:34:34] So, you know, we did see people and stuff, but it wasn't like we had a, a group of adult friends that we hung out with.
[00:34:41] Marbree: Yeah.
[00:34:41] Cindy: But it seemed like we were always busy and usually enjoying ourselves and, and we did put a lot of our energy into the children as they were growing up.
[00:34:50] Marbree: Since retirement, how have you been keeping busy?
[00:34:53] Cindy: Okay. I, um, began a course that's offered through the, um, episcopal church [00:35:00] called Education for Ministry back in 1980. It's a four year course. And I had virtually no affiliation with a church organization since I had entered college. And I yearned. And if you can imagine this, uh, I don't know how, what your background is about being in the south, but it is, it's so.
[00:35:23] Pervasively Christian and increasingly sort of Christian nationalist. And I didn't wanna have anything to do with that. But I did tell my kids that if they ever wanted to go to church, um, they should tell me and I would go with them. But there were some stipulations. I didn't want them to go any of these holy roller places where they're gonna scare 'em about hell and everything.
[00:35:45] So we ended up in an Episcopal church here in town. Which is very progressive and uh, I took this course and loved it and just learned, learned lots. And one of the guys who was teaching it was actually one of my fellow [00:36:00] deans at the University of Alabama. He was the dean of the College of Community Health Sciences and at about the third or fourth year, and he was also an ordained deacon in the Episcopal church.
[00:36:11] Now, he had a different life course than I did. I think he had been, you know, in church activities his entire life. But with our experience together in this four year course, he thought maybe that would be something I would like to do. And the more I learned about it, the more I thought, yeah, I think I could do this.
[00:36:29] Because being a deacon in the Episcopal church is sort of like being. A church social worker, um, that is the, um, definition of a deacon is a person who builds a bridge between the church and the world and brings the needs of the world to the church so the church can respond and then also represents the church.
[00:36:49] In the community in part by, you know, doing good and appropriate things. And I thought, well, this would be a great retirement career. [00:37:00] Now deacons are non depend, which means that you're a hundred percent volunteer. But as I decided more and more that I wanted to do this, it is over a period of three or four years actually, um, and I went through all the processes because this is.
[00:37:17] Episcopal church takes this very seriously. And so you have to, you know, go through a physical exam and a psychological exam, and then a, a weekend vetting experience at a church camp with your husband. Make sure that the match is correct and meeting with bishops and all, all this stuff. And then you're able to take a two year weekend course to become a deacon.
[00:37:41] So I did all this. More or less during my first retirement that is going through all this process and I really liked it. And then they asked me to come back and be the dean. And so I couldn't be a fully [00:38:00] time committed deacon, but I saw. What I was doing as a dean was appropriate to the deacon role. I, I, it's not like I wore a collar to the office, but I was enacting that role in a different way.
[00:38:14] And I did that for about, well, four, four years. And then I said, this is enough. I, I'm gonna really retire. And so I did. And then I got more involved in the diaconate role. And, uh, at about that time, the church I was going to got a new. Rector, who's a really fine man, and so he's just encouraged me to do whatever I want.
[00:38:36] Um, and so, you know, I preach, I visit people in the hospital. I run the outreach committee. I, for a long time, I kind of ran what they called the Deacon's Deli, which is a food pantry that's open every Tuesday morning, and low income people come in and get to select food. Um, I served on a couple of different.
[00:38:57] Boards of directors in the [00:39:00] community. So I've been, that's my second career. That's my post-retirement career. And that's, I'm still doing it. I preached two sermons last week and ought to be getting ready for another one. So that's, that's where I spend the bulk of my time. That's not at home. And then also, you know, there are obviously a lot of the other churches.
[00:39:19] In the state have deacons. And so we have a community of people that I've been working with and known for, you know, 15 or so years. And so that provides another source of community and social support. And we get together from time to time, conventions and weekends up at the camp and stuff like that. So that's mostly my post-retirement life.
[00:39:40] In addition to, um, doing stuff with kids, doing stuff with Dave and, um, traveling well, which is mostly doing stuff with Dave. So that sort of encapsulates my retirement activity and I, it's really, sometimes it's like more than 30 hours a week doing that stuff. So
[00:39:58] Marbree: I can imagine it sounds [00:40:00] like a pretty busy life.
[00:40:01] Cindy: Yeah. In the last couple of years, my life has gotten more different and more. Busy because Dave has a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, although he doesn't have a lot of the bad things that go along with Alzheimer's right now, he has absolutely no memory. You know, like I'll say, what did you have for lunch?
[00:40:20] I don't remember. Or I'll ask him to empty the dishwasher and. About half the things he puts in the wrong place. I can leave him alone for three or four hours safely, I think right now. But I do all the driving, I do all the cognitive stuff, and he's my partner, but he's not the partner that was writing articles for referee journals or, you know, talking with me about, uh, administrative issues at the university.
[00:40:50] He, he's just not. Oh,
[00:40:52] Marbree: I'm so sorry.
[00:40:53] Cindy: So my, this part of my retirement life for maybe the last, what [00:41:00] five years or so, has been gradually adapting to that reality of my life and, uh, trying to, you know, put one foot in front of the other every day.
[00:41:11] Marbree: Yeah.
[00:41:12] Cindy: And I have found that I've had to give up a number of the outside the house responsibilities that I had before.
[00:41:20] 'cause I was driving myself crazy and, uh, I didn't need to be doing, after a lot of people convinced me I didn't need to be doing all that many things. I agreed I didn't. And so life is better now.
[00:41:31] Marbree: Yeah. Hmm. I'm glad you've been able to step back and refocus. All right. I'm gonna ask a, a series of questions.
[00:41:37] Looking back, even though there are other things that I wanna ask about your life, so as you look back over the course of your life, were there decisions that you made that in the moment felt mundane or unimportant? But when you look at them now, you can see shaped the course of your life. No,
[00:41:53] Cindy: I mean, nothing comes to mind immediately.
[00:41:55] I think most of the decisions that I've made that have shaped the course of my life have been [00:42:00] deliberate and well thought through. Now, I'm gonna think about this obviously over the next couple of days, but, um, nothing comes to mind
[00:42:08] Marbree: as you look back. Who would you say are the handful of people who have been the most influential in your life?
[00:42:16] Cindy: Okay. And my father who set the stage for most of the values that I hold, my husband, Dave, there was a colleague at the School of Social Work, uh, who actually joined the faculty the same year as I did, and he was very influential. In my life in helping me to understand what it meant to be a faculty member and, and a researcher and a writer.
[00:42:41] And actually, um, he was an ordained minister before he became a college professor. And, you know, he always used to refer to me as a, as a heathen or a pagan or something like that because I didn't go to church. And he would probably be amused. He. He died several years ago to see [00:43:00] that. Now I'm a, a respected member of the clergy, um, but he was important in my life.
[00:43:06] Um, so, and then, uh, I think more recently, um, my current boss or rector Mark, uh, who's taught me a lot. So I guess that's four people. How many do you want? Yeah, that's
[00:43:21] Marbree: fine.
[00:43:21] Cindy: Okay.
[00:43:22] Marbree: Do you recall at any point receiving a piece of advice or a word of wisdom or a criticism that stuck with you and that you called to mind over the years?
[00:43:32] Cindy: One of the things that my dad always said, often said was. To get along in this world, you have to treat other people. Right. And I've always thought that treating people right, which I interpreted to mean fairly, and giving them a chance to explain themselves, even if I disagreed with them or was angry or something like that, has [00:44:00] served me very, very well.
[00:44:01] And so I think if you ask people that knew me at the university or even at church. People would probably say that I am very fair-minded and make decisions thoughtfully and not on the basis of, uh, favoritism or personal friendship or something like that. Honesty and integrity has been extraordinarily important.
[00:44:28] Marbree: Yeah, they're important values. Okay, I'm gonna jump. You moved well from Wisconsin, but before that you were in the northeast of the United States.
[00:44:36] Mm-hmm.
[00:44:36] And then you moved to Alabama in the 1970s.
[00:44:40] Cindy: Mm-hmm.
[00:44:41] Marbree: There's the religious element, and aside from that, it's still a very different culture. How was that transition?
[00:44:50] Cindy: Yeah. When you think about Madison, Wisconsin as being one of the hotbeds of liberalism, at that time I had hardly known any black people [00:45:00] before I moved here. I had one dear friend in college. I. I don't remember. I suppose there were some black people in Wisconsin School of Social work, but none of them do.
[00:45:11] I remember being close to, um, in Denver, oh, however that was after we moved here. My two best friends were very good, strong black women. Um, but understanding how to deal with that whole racial thing was a learning process. I'm not sure I could easily encapsulate it, but it's just different, you know, and to realize what's going on in the environment around me right now.
[00:45:39] We, we took a trip to Natchez a couple weeks ago, which was just blows your mind when you think about how that economy grew when you go to the place of the slave market. It's not true that the south is the only place where there was a lot of racial animus and difficulty. I know that, and [00:46:00] I've read enough about it to know, but I'm really pleased to know the south as well as I do, and I'm really strangely enough proud to know Alabama culture while at the same time deploring, uh, the positions of some of our.
[00:46:15] Crazy politicians and, and what they say and uh, what they believe. And, uh, I've always felt like, you know, being a social worker in Alabama was a way to bring a. Some of my thoughts and my values to, um, a place where they weren't there very much. I don't, I don't know how, if I'm expressing this correctly, but, um, you know, the, even the little things, you know, when we first moved here, you know, you couldn't go to the grocery store on Sunday or, you know, all that kind of stuff.
[00:46:48] That's not the issue. It, and, and, and it's so much fun to talk with people my age and have them. Be of my persuasion, but have them talk about, you know, when they were growing [00:47:00] up and if somebody was delivering a package to their home, they had black person would have to go to the back door. And, you know, just as they begin to realize what their youth was like.
[00:47:11] And, and so many people say, I never really knew any black people except our maid. And of course we loved her. So, you know, some of it is consciousness, some of it is. Total lack of self-consciousness about what was going on.
[00:47:27] Marbree: Yeah.
[00:47:28] Cindy: It's fascinating. Yeah, and I've taught classes like this. There's a great Episcopal curriculum about racism and multiculturalism, and I've sat in rooms with people who were saying things like this and trying to be kind and loving and move toward love and reconciliation.
[00:47:46] It's it's interest. I am very glad that I've lived in Alabama for 40 plus years.
[00:47:53] Marbree: Well, that's good. And that takes me to my next question, which is, as you look back, are there things in the course of your [00:48:00] life that if you could change, you would,
[00:48:02] Cindy: well, I guess we could start with, I would've liked to know my mother as an adult and interacted with her as an adult.
[00:48:09] That would've been really, really cool. So I wish I could change that. Um, I wish Dave didn't have Alzheimer's disease. Yeah. Um, these are things that are really totally outside of my control. Yeah. I regret that my divorce from my husband was, my first husband was so bitter, but it all turned out well. 'cause I think I've had a better life with Dave than I would've with him.
[00:48:36] But he and I still, you know, we share a grandchild and we're cooperative and in touch sort of.
[00:48:42] Marbree: Yeah. So then I have one final question, which I ask everyone. Okay. Which is, if you had all the world's attention for one minute, what would you ask or what would you say that you would like people to take to heart?
[00:48:55] Cindy: Be kind to one another.
[00:48:57] Marbree: That's a good one.[00:49:00]
[00:49:02] Thank you, Cindy, for being so open. Anyone bold enough to study abroad in high school has my immediate respect. After we spoke, I looked at the Rotary website and learned that they still coordinate exchange opportunities for young people. Some of the benefits listed for doing so include developing lifelong leadership skills, learning a new language and culture, and building lasting friendships with people from around the world.
[00:49:30] Without discounting the many other factors that played into Cindy's life. Sounds to me that she's a shining example of that. To those of you listening, thank you for joining us. If you enjoyed this, please leave a review in Spotify or Apple Podcasts and hit that follow button. These things help others find the podcast and they mean the world to me.
[00:49:52] Share this with anyone you think would love it or learn something from it, and keep coming back from more of The Words We've Heard. [00:50:00] This podcast would not be possible without the editing and production brilliance of Cori Orak, the inspiration of my parents, and a 2001 conversation with my grandmother.
[00:50:11] My thanks to you all.
[00:50:16] So what are the words we've heard be fair and truthful and upright in all that you do? To get along in this world, you have to treat other people, right? And the always important, be kind to one another.