Cynthia was born to white parents committed to teaching Native American children, first in the village of Shageluk, Alaska, then at Mt. Edgecumbe High School located on a group of connected islands near Sitka, Alaska, moving on to Intermountain Indian School near Brigham City, Utah, then back to Mt. Edgecumbe High School, and finally the reservation high school at Many Farms, Arizona. She was the fourth of five daughters and was exposed to students at Mt. Edgecumbe and Intermountain high schools. Along with her assumed white privileges on these two federal Indian school campuses, she recognized a disease, sensing the fear, sadness, and dejection of the children leaving their villages or reservations by bus or plane. Cynthia’s career as a protective services social worker was informed by the loss of family and community of these young people. She worked for state and county government programs investigating child abuse and neglect in three areas – Juneau, Alaska and nearby villages, Los Angeles County in California, and King County in Washington State.
In the 1990s, Cynthia lost a sister, her husband, and my mother to cancer; her father also died of cancer and she experienced bi-lateral breast cancer and subsequent mastectomies in the early 2000s. Those experiences of loss brought her face to face with death, but her faith in a living God sustained her. Her last years of employment at the University of Washington School of Social Work provided an opportunity for hjer to influence the education of Tribal social workers in Washington State.Hery passion was to recruit these students to take advantage of Title IV-E federal funds available for a Master of Social Work (MSW) degree with an emphasis in child welfare. Tribal child welfare employees in Tribal offices took advantage of this opportunity and obtained MSWs while still employed with the tribe, just as State employed child welfare workers had been doing for many years.
After her retirement COVID hit. First her second oldest sister, who lived near Cynthia, became sick and several days later, she experienced symptoms. Thinking at first it was a flu, she thoughtshe was recovering. But then her older sister and Cynthia were hospitalized the same day, March 9th, 2020, her sister to ICU and Cynthia to a newly prepared ward to handle communicable diseases. Her sister died after just nine days ,but after two weeks and various treatments, Cynthia was released home to the care of her younger sister, also positive with a milder case of COVID-19. Again, she felt sustained by God’s love and the love of her family, friends, and church community. Cynthia’s joy is music and gardening, especially creating a children’s garden for the neighborhood.