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Obituary
NORWAY - “Thank you very much. I had a
wonderful time.” Cindy Reedy bid the world adieu on
February 8, 2024 from Androscoggin Hospice House in
Auburn, Maine. As one close friend said to Cindy
shortly after her cancer diagnosis over six years ago,
“you haven’t wasted a minute of your life.” Whether
raising a family; teaching at Hebron Academy;
volunteering her time at local organizations;
participating in numerous Oxford Hills Music and
Performing Arts Association productions; hiking,
camping, skiing and golfing; or traveling the world;
Cindy made the most of her time with us.
Cindy started her remarkable life in
Melrose, Massachusetts on December 4, 1958. She was
the third of four children born to Carol and Richard
Reedy. Cindy was an outstanding student and an
accomplished runner while attending Melrose High
School. After graduating from MHS, she continued her
education at MIT in Cambridge, MA. In 1981, she
graduated from MIT and shortly after moved to Seattle,
Washington to attend the University of Washington
where she earned a Masters degree in bioengineering.
While in Seattle, Cindy met her future husband, Brad
Cummings, when they spotted each other at a Halloween
party.
The germination for Cindy’s lifelong
love of teaching began during her time as a camper at
Camp Nokomis on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in
Meredith, New Hampshire. A teaching career was further
ingrained while working at the Pacific Science Center
in Seattle. At the PSC, Cindy traveled with colleagues
delivering educational programs to rural schools in
Washington and Alaska. Stories from these encounters
with young children in remote parts of WA and AK
provided laughs for many years.
Cindy and Brad were married in 1986 and
moved back to Maine to be closer to family. In 1987,
Cindy started her 34-year career at Hebron Academy in
Hebron, Maine. Cindy’s continuous tenure at HA was the
second longest of any female faculty member since HA’s
founding in 1804. Cindy and Brad welcomed two sons and
a daughter in the early years at HA. As in most
private school settings, Cindy’s duties changed on an
“and other duties as needed” basis. She started as a
science teacher in 1987–biology, chemistry, physics,
earth science–and finished as a Language Department
Chair/French teacher in 2021. Her intellectual
interests and abilities were vast! She even appeared
on Jeopardy in May 2009. Her years timing HA hockey
games paid off when she single-handedly cleared the
“Hockey” topic in the Double Jeopardy Round. In
addition to teaching, Cindy coached cross-country and
track at HA and she helped to produce many of the
annual all-school musicals.
When not at work, Cindy spent countless
hours in her flower garden. She pored through seed
catalogs each year in eager anticipation of the coming
growing season. She loved to share her flowers with
others and she was always on the hunt for varieties
she didn’t have that might reside somewhere else–in a
forest clearing, an abandoned house lot, or even in a
neighbor's garden.
Cindy was active in the local community.
She performed and participated in many productions of
the Oxford Hills Music and Performing Arts
Association, OHMPAA as it is locally known. She also
provided guest sermons at the Norway
Universalist-Unitarian Church when requested. Her
sermons always included an “educational moment” or two
when she would offer a scientific basis for historical
events originally deemed “divine.” Cindy was active on
the Board of Trustees for the Norway Memorial Library,
serving recently as the Board President. Her time on
the board was the perfect extension of her love of
literature, especially murder mysteries and all things
“Jane Austen.”
Travel and outdoor activities were
always part of Cindy’s life. Cindy and her family
camped in the Canadian Maritimes every summer when the
kids were young. She took numerous trips to Europe
with HA students during March break as an extension of
what was taught in the classroom. She backpacked and
mountaineered while living in Seattle followed by more
balanced Maine/New Hampshire area hiking following her
return to the east coast. She completed a one-day
Presidential Traverse through the White Mountains of
NH in June 2014. Recent years afforded time to
downhill ski with Brad and friends on a regular basis.
Her interest in running continued well into her
mid-life. She completed two marathons and she was an
enthusiastic proponent of barefoot running.
Cindy is survived by her husband Brad
Cummings; father Richard Reedy; mother-in-law Joan
Cummings; son Charlie Cummings and daughter-in-law
Kaylyn and grand-daughter Ella; son Tom Cummings and
daughter-in-law Claire; sister Marcia and
brother-in-law Malcolm; brother Allen and
sister-in-law Ellen; sister Allison and brother-in-law
Shane; numerous nieces and
nephews, aunts, uncles and cousins. Cindy was
predeceased by her daughter Claire; mother Carol;
father-in-law Stuart; sister-in-law Lisa;
brother-in-law Gary.
Cindy felt strongly about making the
world a better place. In lieu of flowers or money
donations to any of the worthwhile causes that exist,
her family asks that you “donate” a gift of your time
to a worthwhile cause of your choosing. We can think
of no better way to honor Cindy’s significant
contribution to the world she lived in.
A celebration of life will be held on
Saturday, April 27, 2024 at 11 a.m. at the Hebron
Baptist Church on the Hebron Academy campus. A
reception will follow in the basement of Hupper
Library. Stories and memories of your time with Cindy
are welcome.
Online condolences may be shared with the family at
www.chandlerfunerals.com
Question: Who was the local person on the
‘Jeopardy!’ show?
Mark LaFlamme Staff Writer-May 20, 2009
No, your eyes were not deceiving you. That really was
Norway resident and Hebron Academy teacher Cynthia
Reedy on television’s “Jeopardy!” last night.
Reedy’s appearance on the popular game
show was filmed in Los Angeles in February. When it
aired Tuesday night, she tuned in at the Smiling Moose
in South Paris. There she was, her face on three
television sets and a couple dozen friends around her.
“It was really, really fun,” Reedy said. “It was a
perfect way to watch it.”
In fact, the whole trip was fun, she
said. Forget that she had to shovel 2 feet of snow
just to get out of her yard the day she flew to Los
Angeles. Forget that she came in third and missed a
lot of questions as a result of a slow finger on the
buzzer.
“The buzzer is a lot harder than it
looks,” Reedy said. “At home, you can just blurt out
the answer. On the show, it’s a lot different. I knew
tons of the answers, but the other two contestants
out-buzzed me.”
Particularly painful was the hockey
answer that another contestant beat her to. She knew
immediately that the question was, “Who is Bobby Orr?”
but she couldn’t work the buzzer faster than the man
who ultimately won the round.
“I grew up outside of Boston,” she said.
“I definitely knew that one.”
At Hebron Academy, Reedy teaches
language and chemistry. The first few questions that
came her way dealt with French and Latin. Looking
good. She’s also involved in a theater, which came in
handy at times.
In the end, Reedy came away with $7,200,
which isn’t bad at all for the third-place contestant.
She got the final “Jeopardy” question right but did
not bet any money.
“The others played really well,” she
said. “I didn’t mind coming in third at all. It’s a
game show. You might as well have fun.”
Her trip to the brainiest of game shows began at the
start of the year. Her son kept bugging her to take
the online “Jeopardy” test. Reedy finally hushed him
by promising that she would take the test if she got
that night’s final “Jeopardy.”
As fate would have it, the answer was an
easy one and the next thing she knew, she was on her
way to Los Angeles.
The most nerve-wracking part of the
whole ordeal, she said, was the rehearsal. Beyond
that, everything from start to finish was a joy.
“They are so well-organized with the show,” she said.
“They talk you through everything. They really make
you feel comfortable.”
And Alex Trebek?
“He’s a lot funnier in person,” Reedy
said. “He and I are buds now, so I can call him Alex.”
Cindy Reedy and Brad Cummings Close 43 Years of
Academy Service
SHE IS A FIVE-FOOT DYNAMO, AN EVANESCENT SPIRIT
WHO HAS TAUGHT SEVENTEEN DIFFERENT COURSES IN THREE
DEPARTMENTS, RUN A MARATHON AND SUMMITED PEAKS ON
FOUR CONTINENTS, DIRECTED THEATER PRODUCTIONS AND
CREATED REMARKABLE PAINTED EGGS IN THE ROMANIAN FOLK
TRADITION, APPEARED WITH ALEX TREBEK ON JEOPARDY,
AND REFUSED TO BE BLUFFED BY THE CELEBRITY PANELISTS
ON WAIT, WAIT, DON’T TELL ME. AND PRESENTLY, CYNTHIA
REEDY, WITH HER HUSBAND BRAD CUMMINGS, RETIRES FROM
HEBRON AFTER THIRTY-FOUR YEARS OF ENERGETIC
TEACHING, COACHING, ADVISING, AND MOTHERING TO
COUNTLESS MEMBERS OF THE HEBRON COMMUNITY.
At the close of the year, we listened at Baccalaureate
as Cindy gave the Address to the Class of 2021,
reflecting on her time at the Academy, on her love of
life and teaching, on the roots of her thinking about
how to bring out the best in young people, and on the
heart of family and spirituality that she has shared
with husband Brad. It is a wonderful story, the
remarkable legacy of a Hebron original, that we are
pleased to share—moments which may prompt memories of
Cindy from many of the Hebron family and also moments
which, though unfamiliar and new, may bring a chuckle
and smile of acknowledgment for those who knew her
well.
From roots ‘north of Boston’ in Melrose within sight
of the Hancock tower, Cindy recalls a suburban
childhood in a neighborhood of similar streets arched
by century maples and lined with the frame houses of
working families where “home was home, a center of
life and growth. Mother Reedy was in the home for her
children, imparting skills and values—art and music
always and a piano for lessons in the living room,
cooking and sewing, crafting, indulging a practical
yet creative approach to child-rearing. Father was a
working man, a creative tradesman who taught science
and mathematics principles around the dinner table and
on weekend excursions to the mountains and the shore.
Appreciation for mathematics, natural science,
geology, chemistry and engineering came naturally from
the questions Dad posed in the course of ordinary
conversations and adventures.”
Cindy has always been a runner and began to run
competitively as a school sophomore, earning, in
pre-Title IX days, a spot on the Melrose High boys’
cross country and track teams. Athletic competition,
performing in school musicals, and singing in church
were social outlets for the teenager and instilled a
love of school and town and church, touchstones that
Cindy would carry forward into life. As she
contemplated college, Cindy longed for the
‘left-brain’ liberal arts study of fine art and
languages at Williams College but also considered
definite ‘right-brain’ opportunities for science and
pre-med at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. In a moment of kismet induced by the
suggestive qualities of language, when her acceptance
letter from Harvard announced ‘acceptance to Radcliffe
College’ while MIT ‘welcomed her to the Class of
1980,’ Cindy chose welcoming and inclusion,
matriculating at MIT as a 17-year-old to live in a
co-ed dorm and take in ‘life lessons’ as well as a
formal pre-med curriculum in a collegiate environment
where it was universally understood “that you had a
brain and were accepted for that.” At MIT, Cindy felt
that “there were no boundaries” to her education, and
in addition to pre-med requirements, she minored in
German Literature and French as well as electing
courses in Anthropology, Creative Writing, Literature,
Poetry, and even Glass Blowing, a virtual renaissance
mix of liberal studies. She continued to ‘play with
the boys’ by running cross country and then becoming a
founding member of an MIT women’s cross-country team
that would gain national prominence. Always active and
sharing, Cindy’s college years fostered loves of
hiking, canoeing, skiing, and dance that have
continued throughout her adult life. She even taught
swimming at MIT, volunteering to teach non-swimmers to
complete the Institute’s graduation requirement.
Leaving MIT with a degree in ‘Applied Biology,’
precursor to Biochemistry, she then went
‘west-coastal’ to enter the University of Washington
graduate program in Bioengineering, one of only four
schools in the field.
Cindy always on the move. Circa 1989. country at that
time to offer such a program. Cindy fit the cliché of
the frugal grad student living on a shoestring but
enjoying every minute of it, especially the
opportunities of the Pacific Northwest for climbing,
skiing, and exploring in a tremendously biodiverse
environment. Upon graduation from UW with the degree
of Master of Science in Engineering, Cindy began work
in the Science Outreach Program for the Seattle-based
non-profit Pacific Science Center, an innovative
program created to take ‘hands-on’ science instruction
to underserved areas of the state using specially
equipped and colorfully wrapped ‘theme’ vans to bring
state of the art labs and demonstrations to far-flung
corners of Washington. Cindy was at the center of the
program, a veritable ‘Ms Wizard,’ piloting ‘SOW—
Science on Wheels,’ ‘TOW— Tech on Wheels,’ ‘COW—Comets
on Wheels’ or ‘Stars & Snakes.’ With Cindy as both
pilot and presenter, the colorful vans brought
critters and even a planetarium as far as eastern
Washington’s high desert Palouse country, the Yakama
and Colville reservations, and remote mountain
villages tucked into valleys of the Cascade and
Olympic ranges. It was a wonderful and exciting way to
begin teaching. She recalled that “each day was new
and always could present challenges of adapting the
van’s resources to the students at hand.” Cindy
recounted once gradually adjusting the focus of a
telescope so that a young student, vision-impaired
since birth, might peer into its long barrel to see
Jupiter for the first time. “I can touch the sky!” the
boy exclaimed, a moment of hands-on science that Cindy
has never forgotten.
In 1986, she bought her first business suit as pilot
of the COW van to take a presentation on Halley’s
Comet, then making its generational seventy-fifth year
appearance in our night sky, and standing before a
middle school audience of hundreds, she felt that she
“could never be nervous again.” Back in Seattle, Cindy
began to direct the Science on Wheels program, and she
used both her experiences and beliefs about teaching
to recruit and train recent college graduates to
become the next generation of pilots for the science
vans. “It was a blast to be teaching young teachers to
present hands-on science.” Those early experiences
focused Cindy on the central place of laboratory
experiences, observations, recording, and writing in
the study of science, beliefs that she would bring and
sustain throughout her Hebron experience.
In 1986, Cindy’s world changed dramatically. Invited
to a Halloween costume party, she dressed creatively
for the occasion as that universal lunchbox staple,
the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Perhaps the
interpretation of white T-shirt, purple beret and
brown gloves left more than a little to the
imagination, but in a moment worthy of a romantic
comedy, Cindy explained her costume to another guest,
striking up a conversation with Brad Cummings that
would last a lifetime and bring them both to Maine and
to Hebron Academy. The couple returned to Norway,
Maine—Brad to his family’s business and Cindy to seek
a position as a teacher. Discovering that her degrees
in Biochemistry and Bioengineering did not qualify her
to teach general biology in the public schools, Cindy
turned to independent education where her credentials
and experience were enthusiastically welcomed. She
chose to come to Hebron, in part because of proximity
to home, and began by teaching ninth-grade
It was a wonderful and exciting way to begin
teaching. Each day was new and always could present
challenges of adapting the van’s resources to the
students at hand.
science, then called Principles of Science, where her
experiential and hands-on approach to subject matter
was ideally suited. She was also partnered with Moose
Curtis to teach a robust chemistry program for juniors
in which lab work comprised nearly half of all course
work. And for years, ‘National Chemistry Day’ would
become an annual event at which Cindy and Moose,
Hebron’s chemistry ‘Wizards,’ showcased all manner of
‘mixology,’ creating novel compounds that could ooze,
expand, or explode.
When Hebron began its middle school program in 1992,
Cindy continued her lab-based, hands-on approach with
the younger students of the new division, and with
dedicated lab space and a flexible schedule planned
lots of laboratory time as well as many field trips to
explore the woods, brooks, and bogs of the Academy’s
campus. The flexibility of the middle school schedule
also allowed Cindy to continue to teach actively in
the middle school during the time that her
children—Charlie, Claire, and Tom—were toddlers. Soon
the children were of age to begin at Hebron, and all
went through the school. “Hebron gave me the
incredible benefit to be Mom on campus, to watch my
children grow, and to see at first hand their
experiences academically, artistically and
athletically,” she said. Indeed, the three Cummings
children were in the school for seventeen of Cindy’s
thirty-four years.
Soon Cindy began to teach language as well and
eventually offered French at all levels as well as
ESL, Latin, German and even Arabic. She initiated the
FLEX (Foreign Language Experience) program for sixth
graders, allowing new students to have an introductory
experience in multiple languages, and she defined the
criteria for the Compton Prize for Languages, awarded
annually to a junior student demonstrating passion and
dedication to multiple languages. Cindy’s basic
beliefs for teaching language parallel her thoughts on
science: a ‘project-based’ curriculum in a learning
environment that is not ‘teacher-centric,’ ideals
driven by her professional experiences with the
Rassias method at Dartmouth College and a Fulbright
Fellowship to Morocco where she studied age-level
multilingual programs for elementary and secondary
education. At Hebron, one does not enter Cindy’s
language classroom, but rather is welcomed into her
‘living room,’ a space filled with art and objects and
books and puzzles, a space where one joins in everyday
conversation, sings songs, tells stories, recites
poetry, and comments on the news of the day, all in a
most familiar and comfortable experience with the
target language.
By the numbers, Cindy’s contributions to Hebron are
extraordinary. In her thirty-four years, she has
taught seventeen different courses in three
departments across all levels of the school and in
myriad spaces, ranging from the top of Sturtevant Hall
to the undercroft of Sturtevant Home and in Treat,
Hupper, and Kaneb as well.
The arc of Brad’s journey to Hebron was somewhat
different. His years in the west before marriage were
a time of adventure and trying new things. “I got my
mid-life crisis out of the way early,” he recalled. “I
was footloose and fancy-free and worked a variety of
jobs.” A season in Glacier National Park collecting
data on forest growth as part of a fire-suppression
study for the Bureau of Land Management was followed
by a stint as guide at a Pacific salmon fishing lodge.
“How lucky can you be to get paid to fly-fish and
guide sports on incredible waters?” Brad mused. “I
then became a ‘mud-logger’ for a time in the Wyoming
shale country. Because I had a geology background, I
was hired to catalog and analyze core samples coming
off the pilot holes being dug in the great basin where
I could look off from the top of a rig and see nothing
at all. It was my peripatetic time.” But after that
Halloween party with a special peanut butter sandwich,
it all changed.
Returning to Norway after the death of a brother, Brad
joined the family wood products business founded in
1860 by his namesake great-great grandfather C.B.
Cummings. While the company’s main products were
furniture parts and turnings, its most familiar and
timeless products were the childhood building sets of
Tinker Toys and the ubiquitous red and green hotels
and houses used in the classic Monopoly game. But it
was also a time when plastics, outsourcing, and
overseas production made wood products an increasingly
difficult business arena. Brad moved on to management
with other companies, and in the fall of 2011 on the
sidelines of a Hebron football game, then-Head of
School John King asked if Brad might give time to
Hebron as the interim leader of Hebron’s fledgling
Entrepreneurship Program. It was a good match, and
after the first fall session of the program, Mr. King
asked Brad to stay on to continue teaching business as
well as to teach in the ESL program and coach.
“And so it was that something that I never really
imagined doing became an important part of my life,”
Brad noted. “The teaching and coaching were very
special for me. And now, being an ‘empty-nester,’
Hebron is something that I have shared with Cindy.”
Brad ended up teaching Entrepreneurship and ESL for
nine years. As a businessman turned teacher, Brad has
had the satisfaction of watching students encounter
real-world learning as they work on money, business,
the stock market, investments, and asset management.
Regardless of the background his students have, he has
no doubts that they will find success since “they are
learning survival instincts for the real world.”
Equally important for Brad was the opportunity to work
with students athletically. He really enjoyed coaching
football with Moose Curtis, Eric Harrison, and Tom
Radulski, especially for the opportunity to watch
these coaches implement a team concept and to observe
how they understood what each athlete needed and how
to teach it. A particular thrill was reaching the
final game of the inaugural New England 8-Man Football
League with Tom Radulski’s team, a dedicated group
that was able to make the most of their skills and
opportunities in a nearly undefeated season. The
greatest reward for many Hebron couples who have given
much of their lives to the school always seems to be
the joy of building a family in the context of Hebron
life. Indeed, family, campus, and teaching became
indivisible for Cindy and Brad, and they have loved
living the life of the school. And for both, the joy
of years of teaching come not just from the students,
but from the deep collegial spirit shared with the
adult community. Cindy counts as personal north stars
Betsy Found, Leslie Guenther and Kathy Leyden—close
colleagues, but also mentors, creative inspirations
and important adult friends. Brad speaks of the
pleasure of having relationships defined by ‘Coach C,’
as well as the importance of sharing ideas and
learning in the company of adults committed to a
common purpose together, a far cry from the
management-labor relationships of business.
When Cindy delivered the Baccalaureate Address for the
Class of 2021, she spoke of the importance of time and
place, how in unexpected and transcendent moments each
person may be vital to the life of another. It was a
moment so typical of the woman who has embodied wisdom
for so many at Hebron. For Cindy and Brad, the days of
retirement open fresh and new. There are new mountains
to climb, waters to explore in a new lightweight
touring canoe, and time for volunteer opportunities.
This couple will surely not be idle!
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