|
PVCC Remembers Lost Friend,
Mentor
By Mary Lou
Mosley, Senior Associate Dean of Instruction
At 3:30 a.m.
Saturday morning, Oct. 13, my telephone rang, and I knew. Cindy
Shoenhair was gone. Though I believe, as Cindy did, in heaven, the
knowledge hit me with a sense of loss that was physical, as though
the air had been knocked out of me. A ray of sunshine had gone out.
I grieve for
her family, her friends, the college and all those people she had
touched. We have lost a teacher, a learner; a friend, a colleague,
a leader, a follower, a wife, a mother and a servant of Christ.
We have not
been left without the message of her life. Cindy believed that God
was using her. On the water cooler at her home, she displayed this
quote from Mother Theresa: "We are pencils in the hand of God."
She lived with the knowledge that God was using her to touch other
people, that she was truly His instrument.
She died as
she lived: fighting to survive for her children, never giving up
her faith and belief in God no matter how hard the trial. Cindy
was a model of love, compassion and strength for all of us. She
showed us how far a positive attitude, even in the face of great
odds, can take us. She also showed us how important it is to fight
for your beliefs, for what you know is right and good.
During one
of her sickest periods just before fall semester, Cindy came to
school despite debilitating pain and fatigue. She wasn't thinking
of herself. Her students from last spring's First Year Experience
(FYE) block as well as the Fall's FYE were on her mind. She wanted
to see how they were doing and whether they needed help registering
for classes this year, so she phoned each one of them.
"I just couldn't
believe that anyone at a college would care enough to call each
of her students to make sure everything was OK," said one of the
FYE students.
That human
touch exemplifies who Cindy was.
Cindy believed
that all students can be successful and that learning can take many
forms and happen in many places. But, she knew that the key was
the person-to-person contact and relationships, whether it be between
student and teacher, student and student, or student and staff.
As all teachers
know, such relationships entail risk. Cindy was not afraid to dream
and take risks. French writer and winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize
in Literature, Anatole France, wrote these words that, for me, describe
Cindy: "To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also
dream, not only plan, but also believe." Cindy was a dreamer who
took action.
Cindy used
what she knew about learning and about people to dream and develop
programs like First Year Experience that encouraged student success.
She worked with the Emerging Leaders program and developed a series
of courses that would take the students through the different levels
of leadership.
Based on the
philosophy that athletes were students first and it was our job
to help them succeed at school, Cindy developed the athletic program.
As first athletic director, she envisioned and helped build athletics
at PVCC, including the new track and soccer fields.
While we see
the concrete programs and facilities that she built, Cindy did not
count her successes in those things she created, but in the lives
she impacted. Cindy believed in you, in me, in all of us. She believed
that we could achieve the impossible, and she instilled that belief
in us.
She was most
excited about the student she helped stay in school, or the student
who had a chance to attend college because of the athletic program
that she had built, or the students who returned to visit her with
stories of their successes after transferring to a four-year university,
and there was a special place in her heart for the ladies in her
Senior Aerobics class.
When Cindy's
husband Dan called and asked Donna Rebadow and me to choose some
items from Cindy's office that represented her life at PVCC, we
knew it was going to be hard to face Cindy's things without her.
We put it off until it could wait no longer. The items were to be
buried with her, stashed in a drawer in her casket. Finally, Tuesday
morning at 5 a.m., Donna and I visited her office to collect these
tokens of her career. Looking around, it didn't take long to know
what items belonged with her.
First and foremost,
she was a teacher, so we chose a whiteboard marker. We chose the
nameplate from her door because it identified her role: health and
exercise science faculty. We picked a photograph of PVCC athletes,
one of the senior aerobics class, an Emerging Leaders seven values
card and an FYE brochure.
Additionally,
on her key chain, hung a pink and white golf ball that bore the
names of her twin girls: Abby and Samantha. The golf ball had to
go in the casket, we told her husband, Dan.
All of these
items bespoke the life of one who had made a difference, who cared
about those around her and gave herself for others. These are the
marks of a true leader.
Cindy's approach
to leadership defined her approach to life. As she was fond of pointing
out, you don't lead from the front-you don't lead by example. Leadership
is not a place, nor a position: "Good leaders bring out the best
in others."
To Cindy, it
was all about people, not places or things.
Published in the PVCC Puma Press, Oct. 2001, Volume VIII |
