(1948-2021)
a Biography
I
don't know the answers to the easy way she's opened every door to my
mind
But
dreaming was as easy as believing it was never gonna end
Loving
her was easier than anything I'll ever do again
Kris Kristofferson
D Vautier 1/2022
home
Cynthia was born
in 1948 to Rachael Lenore Pitts and Kenneth Scott Bray at Wilcox
Memorial Hospital in Portland. Bray decided not to stick around for the
birth and moved on to greener pastures further south where he managed to
procreate a few more half-sisters. Meanwhile
Lenore moved to Seattle and had her own business doing electrolysis,
that is, removing heir. Most
of Lenore’s clients were men who did not like hair growing where it
ought not grow so business was good.
Of course having a thriving business and supporting a young child
during the late 40’s and early 50’s was not the easiest of things to
do and given the fact that Lenore herself suffered severe mood swings,
albeit expected under these circumstances, it was probably expected also
that Cynthia’s growing-up days were quite challenging.
Another ingredient to add to all this instability was the idea
that Cynthia was a brilliant child, perceptive and sensitive way beyond
her years.
Her early years
were a cacophony of endless babysitters and caretakers.
There was no real “mommy” around in her life.
Instead there was this woman or that woman or this family or that
family. It is true that
Lenore finally did marry Frank Rudie, a kind and gentle man, who offered
Cynthia some security from the vagaries of a torn post war world.
That was in itself surprising because Frank had seen firsthand
the mud and blood of the defense of Port Moresby.
He was there when the bayonets were flying and the Japs were
kamokaseing and bonsai charging. Yet
his kind nurturing was so helpful in encouraging the fire of a little
baby spirit that was just about ready to go out.
Not once but twice did Lenore divorce and remarry Frank, only a
testament to his unswerving fortitude and dedication, not just to the
brilliant older child, not his, but to his own two children that were
his by Lenore.
Chris was younger
by a few years and always suffered because she felt that she was not
quite as smart as her older sister.
Her mom always reinforced this by saying “your sister gets the
grades but you have the beauty.” Nice move there - as if to make the
difficulties worse than they had to be and drive the stigma even deeper.
All through her life Chris intensely felt this inferiority, and
because she shared her mother’s wild jeans it only got worse as time
went on. Even
as we rushed to see her, she died alone and by her own hand.
Of course nobody could blame her because of the suffering she had
endured for so long from colon cancer.
Ross was Frank’s
second child by Lenore.
He loved to draw things.
Cynthia and Ross got along very well.
Ross was for a long time complaining about frequent headaches and
his mom often gave him some aspirin and told him to stop complaining.
He was only 17 and died one night from a brain hemorrhage.
Cynthia never forgave her mother.
She felt that a normal mother would fiercely pursue the cause of
such persistent headaches and that may have been one reason why Cynthia
looked upon life as so unfair, so terribly unjust.
She loved her brother so why should he be taken at such an early
age and with so much to offer the world.
Cynthia attended
Lowell Elementary School on Capitol Hill in Seattle from 1955 to 1962
which included grades 1 through 6. She
also attended the seventh day Adventist academy in Seattle for two years
for her seventh and eighth grade, during which time she made several
lifelong friends. She then
attended Lincoln High school in Seattle from 1964 to 67.
When she was at
Lincoln she became a close friend of John Church who
used to walk her home every afternoon.
They soon became fast friends but her mother Lenore did not like
John at all. Lenore kicked Cynthia out of the house because she refused
to give up her close relationship with John so the two of them had to
find another place to live. They
soon married. It was more like a marriage of convenience.
She didn’t really love John that much but they always remained
friends.
Cynthia took a
number of jobs during this time. In
1967 she worked in the post office on Lander street sorting mail.
At this time she was able to take a course in data processing in
1968, and was hired by Boeing from October 68 until April 69 as a
computer scheduler. She was also admitted as a full time student to the
University of Washington because of her outstanding GPA and began
studies in the spring of 1969. All
the while she carried a full time job at the National Bank of Seattle
which lasted until April 1971. She even flipped hamburgers at Dick’s
Drive-In on Capitol Hill to make extra money.
May 1970 she and
John divorced. It was
totally amicable.
After the divorce
Cynthia fell into kind of a funk. It
was at this time she met and fell in love with Russell Pratt.
She always called him “Bert” maybe just as a sort of nickname.
At the time Russell was attending Seattle University and was considering
joining the Jesuits. His confessor (spiritual adviser) advised against
such a move because Russell did not have the "illumina", or
that particular whatever to survive their two year novitiate. He then
met Cynthia and they fell in love. They soon got married and decided to move because Seattle was
dead in those times after the big Boeing lay-offs.
Off they went in his 1969 VW with nothing more than toothbrushes
and socks, headed for Denver and a future of fame and fortune.
This was the spring
of 1971 and Cynthia immediately took a job with Colorado National Bank.
She also enrolled at Colorado University, Boulder and continued her
studies there for the next three years.
Bert and Cyn first
lived in an apartment in Boulder at 507 Arapahoe Ave.
Later they bought a small house in Longmont at 120 Placer Ave.
It was quite small and Cyn placed some triangle stones in the
front walkway. Those stones
are still there.
Cynthia became Phi
Beta Kappa in December 1974 and the same year received the Jacob Van
Award. She transferred her
UW credits to UC in August 1977 and was admitted to law school.
In August 1978 she withdrew from law school to work at the United
Bank of Denver. In Spring 79
she was re-admitted to law school but decided against it because she
wanted to have a more exciting life.
She always said that law was way too boring.
The diagonal is a
20 mile stretch of road from Boulder to Denver.
Bert and Cyn often did the diagonal on weekends on their bikes.
She had an older iron bike with two big baskets in back that
weight a ton. It must have
been quite a workout doing the diagonal.
One weekend Bert
and Cyn decided to ride to Ft. Collins which was quite a trip.
After that ordeal Cyn had to stay in bed for two days recovering.
They never did the trip again.
One rainy day Bert
was coming home and he hit a cow that was on the road.
It demolished their VW and killed the cow.
The farmer wanted Bert to pay for the cow and took him to court.
The court ruled in Bert’s favor.
Bert often told Cyn of his many experiences in Vietnam. He was stationed at Cam Ranh Bay which was one of the major supply bases during the war. He got a cushy job working for the CO because he was the only one in his platoon who could type. He was very good at typing. It was a nice position because working for the CO did have many privileges.
Some time in 1979
Bert announced to Cynthia that he no longer loved her and that he was
getting a divorce. Cynthia
was in a deep period of depression and took Bert’s rifle and shot
herself. The bullet was
through and through, entering just below the left collar bone, missing
the aorta by less than an inch and exiting the back missing the spine by
about an inch. She was
immediately hospitalized and Bert promised that he would never leave her
and love her forever.
Cyn realized that
her actions were a cry for help.
After all she was still a young woman of 31 and had her
entire life ahead so they divorced in 1980 on very friendly
grounds.
She gave him the house and just about everything else because he
had put her through college.
Cynthia
always loved Bert but could not see having a family with him or living
with him the rest of her life. She
rented a U-Haul and came back to Seattle alone to start anew leaving
Denver behind forever.
Cyn always viewed
those years with a mixture of nostalgia and dread because she felt so
trapped by Denver, by the cold, the mountains, and even the people. She
actually welcomed a return to Seattle, her home town.
Bert remarried in
1982 and died in 2019.
When Cyn arrived
in Seattle she got in touch with her step-dad Frank and he gladly
invited her to stay with them until she could get settled.
She immediately took a programming job at Rainier Bank in 1981.
In 1987 she then accepted a Job at Boeing which lasted until her
retirement in 2012.
She married Ken in
September 1982 soon after getting the Rainier Bank job. The marriage
lasted until 1989. During that time they rented an
apartment in Bellevue and later bought a house in the same city.
She had her first child Fiona Rudie Cofield in 1983 and the next
year, 1984 had Gabriel Ross Cofield.
As in “Love
Story” I have to say “Where do I begin?”
Maybe here.
Certainly in our
32 years of marriage there were rough spots but there were many, many
more happy spots than rough spots.
But at the beginning it was a tangled and twisted mess of a
divorce involving constant negotiations, intrigues and maneuverings.
Finally it did end.
My ex had her house and maintenance and educational support for
my older son, and even though I gave her everything she wanted, my ex
wanted more. The
court said otherwise and that was it.
So when Cyn and I
did tie the knot our marriage was memorable because it all happened so
fast. Cyn
called me at work on a monday (we both were at work) and said “Let’s do it.” On
Thursday we got married and went back to work.
Her boss was curious because she was acting funny, like she was
on something.
“Where did you
go for lunch?” he asked.
She got pregnant
and we chose to call him Valentine after my brother who only lived nine
months. Cyn had no trouble
with her first two but something was wrong with this baby.
After some ultrasound and testing the doctor told me that the
fetus was trysomy-18 and would not live.
“I suppose that
makes your choice an easy one.” The doctor said.
“Easy for you, I
suppose. It's not for me.” I answered.
Since I was a
catholic, all life matters dearly but catholic doctrine holds the
principle of two-fold effect which meant that continued pregnancy
endangered the mother and that the baby would certainly not live.
It was a hard time for me.
Soon
after Cyn was expecting again and it was an easy pregnancy.
I followed her around all the time like a sheep dog. “Now
don’t do this.” and “Don’t lift that.”
I think I drove her out of her mind. “Dominic! Please!
Everything will be fine.”
She would reassure. When the
time came we went to the hospital and I got to see my beautiful little
red-headed baby boy—certainly of the great highlights of my life.
Cyn loved pets. We always had dogs, usually mutts. We had a few cats but cats choose their owners, so whichever neighbor gave out the best tuna fish became the owner. But dogs are all loyal except for our vizsla Pumpkin. She had wild blood. She was a runner and we spent many a day searching for her. I remember we had anywhere from two to five dogs and I myself often called them by their color. To me there was only brown dog and black dog and white dog because the family often assigned cute esoteric names to the dogs which would quickly become shortened into unpronounceable mumbles, which, of course the dogs would easily respond to. Pumpkin became “neamers”, Sophie became “Sofers”, Venus was always “black dog”. Smokey was “Mokers” Mosis was “Mozie”.
The hardest thing about dogs
is that they die and they die before you do. Some people don't have dogs for this reason but
the sorrow a family goes through is therapeutic because everybody will
face death just like dogs.
It
is my strong feeling that all families need dogs just as all parents need
shrinks and kids.
Cyn worked on me for a long time to see a therapist and I finally
relented. Now I know everything about me and I’m still
obsessive-compulsive and passive-aggressive. Oh well.
Cyn
had the “Washington complex”. She
could not lie nor could she tolerate lies.
Like the frog and the scorpion it was so imbedded in her nature
to be truthful. Here was perhaps the only sore spot in our entire 31
years living together in an otherwise blissful mind sharing relationship
where there were no secrets, no agendas, no hidden narratives, no
deceit, only honesty and truth. In my first marriage I developed a bad
habit of lying to my first wife as the only way to survive.
So it took me a long time to overcome my bad and sometimes destructive
ways. I had no reason to lie anymore because Cyn was just that kind of
person.
more------much more
