Happy Birthday Cindy
- Marcie Miller
Cedar Lawn Eulogy -
Richard Deuel
Cindy's Favorite
Things - Cindy Deuel
Headstone Dedication
- Richard Deuel
Tragedy Touches All -
Wendi Smith
A Wife, A Girlfriend,
A Friend, A Partner, A
Teacher-
Richard Deuel
For My Sister Cindy-
Richard Deuel
My Dearest Daughter
-Mom
Happy Birthday
-Richard Deuel
2 Years Later
-Richard Deuel
Mulvaney 1976 photo
A Birthday Wish To
Vega-Richard A. Deuel
Breaking News -
Cindy's Trip To Mars
- Richard A. Deuel
Cindy's Favorite
Puzzle
The Night Has A
Thousand Eyes -
Francis William
Bourdillon
Cindy Did Solve This
Puzzle - David Leung
HAPPY 32ND BIRTHDAY CINDY!
In honor of Cindy's birthday, which she is hopefully
celebrating by counting the number of angels that can fit on
the head of a pin, I offer you Cindy's Columbia University
admissions essay, which I found among her papers. I have
titled this essay "Jar Lids" as you will soon discover why.
Yes Cindy, I remember Sally's boxes and boxes of jar lids. I
was also fascinated by her collection of jar lids, not because
of their mathematical combinations, but by the sheer number
of them in her collection! My gifted baby sis, you still
inspire me everyday, to learn, explore and investigate this
crazy world in which we live. I'm sure after reading this,
people wont look at jar lids quite the same. They'll pause
and think of you. That is all we can do for now. Think and
remember your clever ways. I am smiling right now. Thanks
sis. Now lets read how it all began, with "Jar Lids" and lots
of smarts for such a little girl.
Cindy Deuel
Admissions Essay
June 15, 2000
A few people are lucky in life in that they discover their true
calling at an early age. I am one of those people. Although
I've drifted away from it, I have always longed to return to
the place that made me most happy in my childhood. While
some may discover their calling while praying at an altar or
intervening in a traumatic situation, my epiphany occurred
rather uneventfully while playing underneath my
pseudo-aunt, Sally's kitchen table.
Sally looked like Yoda, balding with strange moles and
growths all over her face and neck, a little plump and hairy.
Her appearance wasn't the only commonality she shared
with the Star Wars sage; she also seemed to possess some
of his wisdom. She was knowledgeable on a variety of
topics. She had a great love of nature and science, but also
paradoxically was extremely religious. Given all of this,
Sally was my favorite of my mother's friends. We went to
visit her quite often and I was always glad to go - perhaps a
little too glad. I drove her crazy, always trying to be part of
the conversation and demanding attention in obnoxious
ways. She tried to remedy this situation by many means.
Then one day, by chance, her salvation came.
When we arrived at Sally's that day she was preserving fruit.
She had all the necessary equipment strewn about the
kitchen. Sally and my mother began chatting. After some
time, they noticed how quiet I'd been all day. They peeked
under the table to see what I was doing and were quite
surprised at what had kept me occupied. I was sitting under
the table surrounded by hundreds of jar lids.
From that day forward, every time we went to Sally's they
set me down at the table with the bags of jar lids and left me
alone. Occasionally their curiosity would get the best of
them and they'd ask what I was doing and I'd reply, "making
pictures of things". That was the best answer I could
conjure given the language skills I had at the time.
However, what I was really doing was the math.
With those jar lids I was able to understand addition,
subtraction, division and negative and prime numbers, before
I even knew how to count. I would spend hours trying to
make patterns out of the different types of lids. I would line
them up or stack them in columns or pyramids. What I was
trying to do, but never had enough time in a single visit, was
to fit all of the jar lids into some kind of pattern.
Eventually, I started kindergarten and soon forgot about my
lids. In school, I immediately excelled at math, (while
stumbling at the more basic tasks, like tying my shoes). It
took me some time to connect symbols and words they were
teaching me with the concepts that I already understood.
Once I did though, a whole world opened up for me.
At some point in my early school career I, along with four
other students, were selected for a somewhat experimental,
talented and gifted program. The class was wonderful. We
made videos, did logic problems and studied the animals in
the woods near our school, among other things. We did have
to attend regular class part of the time and even occasionally
make presentations to them. During this time my love of
math continued. I wouldn't say that I loved school in
general, mostly because I was very poor and most of the
kids were quite wealthy. However, despite these difficulties
I learned a lot and enjoyed myself a great deal.
At age twelve, we moved to Pennsylvania and my
relationship with education was permanently altered. When
my father and I went to register me for school, we were told
that I would be put into "average" classes. Their reason
was that they didn't know how to compare my prior schooling
with their curriculum. Thus began my nightmare.
In order to understand this new school system, it is
necessary to understand the community in which it exists.
It's a place of dying industry, where for a few centuries
generations of families have labored in the mills and
mentally they are still attached to that way of life. It's a
place where even though the incidence of cancer is unusually
high, the townships still refuse to vote environmental
restrictions on the factories for fear of layoffs. There, fun
for teenagers is driving around the town in circles waiting for
something interesting to happen.
This place that so adamantly resists change and forsakes
logic in favor of "their way of doing things" was a very bad
place for me to attend school. Having previously been
spoiled by my parents and my school with so much freedom
of thought, I rebelled against this restrictive and backward
environment explosively.
For the next five years I remained in a constant battle with
my school. Their "curriculum", which they feared may be
too advanced for me, was like kindergarten for chimpanzees.
Relative to my prior experience, days in those classes were
like days in prison and like any frustrated prisoner I tried to
escape.
My escapes were frequent and I often encouraged other
prisoners to free themselves as well. The result of this being
a number of threatened expulsions and numerous days
subjected to in-school and out-of-school suspension. What
they didn't realize however, was that I enjoyed their
punishments much more than attending class. Out-of-school
suspension just meant ultimate freedom and in-school
suspension just gave me an opportunity to study and learn.
I'd spend my days of punishment reading, writing and playing
with math.
In addition to the punishment they also promoted counseling.
There were a number of well-meaning guidance counselors
who tried to "get through" to my friends and me. They
asked many questions: were we having problems at home,
were we using drugs and so on. It amazes me that they
never thought to ask what it was that we did when we
skipped school. Perhaps if they had, they would have
understood what it was that we needed.
The days that we didn't go to school we learned multitudes
more than the days we did. We traveled to New York City
and Philadelphia. We went to museums and plays. We
would have contests involving logic problems or word games.
We spent days doing historical research on the original
settlers of our region. In general, we had a passion for
learning that our school could not feed.
Midway through my senior year, I was told that I would not
graduate. Even with my excessive absenteeism I had
managed to pass my classes, with the exception of gym
which I had failed every year. I had already been accepted
to college, so I contacted them as to what I could do. They
told me I could still attend in the fall as long as I withdrew
from school and passed my GED. I took their advice and did
just that.
The next ten years I lived in many areas of the country and
had both negative (The University of Tampa) and positive
(New York University) experiences with education. I worked
in a variety of industries (securities, mortgages, music,
movies, etc.). Recently, I began two small businesses of
which both are successful, but something was still missing. I
had a hole in my heart that could only be filled with one thing
- jar lids.
I love math and not only do I love it, but also I need it. I am
never as happy or peaceful, as I am when someone gives me
a difficult problem to mull over. While I am playing with
math, I don't notice time passing, my problems dissolve away
from me and in some ways I even forget that I exist. It is
true that I don't need an education to study math. I could go
through life doing what I do now - spending endless hours
looking for patterns in the primes and trying to elicit unique
relationships among numbers, but this is a somewhat lonely
existence. When you love something, you want to share it
and that is why I took a position at Columbia and now why I
am applying to school. I am not going to school to increase
my income-producing potential or so I can climb the
corporate ladder. I want to go to school at Columbia so that
I can learn and share in an environment truly dedicated to
learning.
important in
life?
"FREEDOM" -
Cindy Ann
Deuel
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