Cyndy

For the last 10 years that I resided on Saipan, Cyndy Tice, RN and Nursing Instructor at the local community college, has been the mainstay in the NMC Nursing Department, and the ubiquitous presence in any health-related event on island, bar none.

Cyndy this June will be honored by the College of Wooster with an alumni recognition award, capping a long journey of service that began when she combined the rigorous discipline (“the habit of mastery” imbued by her school) of biology with the impinging demands of post-WWII sociology.

The little Presbyterian Church-related liberal arts college in Ohio deterred alumni from turning it into a large university. Known for its co-educational independent study program, where each student is paired with a faculty mentor for their senior research project, the College of Wooster sits on a 22-acre hill overlooking the Killbuck Valley and engages every student in a process of learning that places the student at its center. This democratization of excellence creates self-reliant students; because Wooster honors every student with personal attention, students develop their own vision and the confidence to pursue them.

I thought of Cyndy last week and her impending alumni award while in New York City. I was set to watch President Obama welcome teachers to the Rose Garden at the White House to recognize the former NYPD turned Connecticut pedagogue as the National Teacher of the Year. Previously a reluctant SVES ToY awardee myself (I shaved my head in protest of PSS policies regarding teachers, and threatened to attend the Education Day ceremonies in drag before being persuaded otherwise by colleagues in response to pressure on Jonas Barcinas’ cross-dressing Fun Day), I was delighted that education reform has been made one of three pillars in the early thrust of the Obama Administration.

Not naturally predisposed to value award ceremonies, I did see an unintended effect of the ToY recognition from the CNMI Legislature. It made my Dad in his waning days in Honolulu happy as my brother framed the award and hung it above my Dad’s care home bed. With the same name, my Dad did not bother to ask if the recognition was his or mine.

But National ToY day on Pennsylvania Ave. was also the outset of the swine flu epidemic so the Rose Garden ceremony was eclipsed by the events triggered in Mexico. Kilili Sablan did manage to publicly thank teachers, and having just recently vacated my teaching post at SVES, and my affinity to the profession remaining strong, I am partial in echoing the laurels of teachers.

It is in this context that I lift up Cyndy Tyce’s journey as a teacher and as a nurse. As a rule, I do not usually write about individuals with the exception of my former SVES and PSS’ highly-lauded Principal Janet Villagomez, but Cyndy also comes as a formidable exception.

Cyndy’s college was at the cutting edge of the creative dialogue between science and religion represented at its founding by the proponents of evolution and creation. Wooster also effected a transformation of the Christian missionary impetus into humanitarian international service that preceded our current sense of globality and the recognition of the inherent value of cultural diversity. Cyndy graduated as an embodiment of her school’s teaching and vision.

Thus, Cyindy proceeded to get her nursing degree in Chicago, actively manifesting the emergent women’s cause without being obtrusive or disruptive in the process. Exhibiting a “can do” attitude before that stance became popular with Chicago’s own Hillary and Barack/Michelle Obama, Cyndy took her vision straight from the windy city to her youthful President John F. Kennedy’s call to service in the U.S. Peace Corps.

She PCV’d in the river basin and delta by the Bay of Bengal, training nurses to be trainers of nurses. This bundle of talents would traverse Earth’s landscape, reminiscent of the journey of the youthful Macedonian in whose name the various Alexandrias were founded. The path was not without its tribulations. As a nurse in Chicago, Cyndy was exposed to TB so she tested positive at her Peace Corps training. After she completed the course, regulation barred her from joining her class to their post. Undeterred, she proceeded to train in public health nursing and administration while working as a hospital pediatric nurse in San Franscisco. A full basket of erudition, she had command of a few languages.

Her volunteer stint in Bangladesh (East Pakistan then) proved to be a determining influence on her career. Returning as a staff nurse to the Experiment in International Living in Vermont where PCVs were trained, she segued back to San Francisco’s Mt. Zion Hospital, and finally taught Nursing at Arizona State University.

College vision met up with CARE International in 1973, and 17 years of Cyndy’s life journey got gobbled up at crossroads of global conflicts and crises. Before the Talibans required veils of its women, Cyndy was in the streets of Kabul, then with Kampuchean refugees in Thailand and the elevated villages of Nepal before human trafficking became a celebrated homeland security cause. Another pit stop in Bangladesh led to Sudan before the Darfur genocide, but shortly after Idi Amin was removed from Uganda where she saw boys stood inches taller than their Kalashnikovs. Back to Kalkuta’s neighbor to the east, WHO entered Cyndy’s resumé, and a 4-year service with the Aga Khan Foundation in West Pakistan ensued. Soon she was elbowing her diminutive frame among the former USSR Kasakhs in Kulsary near the Caspian, and then executed another run to the south of Sudan before getting back to America’s ribbon of highways.

This L.A.-born lass would not quit. Chamolinia called in 1997, and this May, NMC, the Saipan Immanuel UMC, and other NGOs will thank her and bid her their respective adios. As silent water runs deep in the Marianas Trench, Cyndy Tice quietly but dependably ran the gamut of girls’ scouting to ecumenical relations, walkathons to diabetes detection. The College of Wooster’s pride became our own, and while she will be missed, a lot of her remains behind.