Old Order Mennonite would never be a ‘submissive’ wife; struck her own course
Lucinda (Cindy) Bolger of Waterloo Born: Sept. 25, 1921, in Yatton, Ont. Died: Dec. 6, 2017, of age related illness
Cindy Martin was only 12 years old when she left home to work as a mother’s helper, where the jobs usually entailed assisting a pregnant mother around the time of birth. These were all temporary positions and it would soon be time to move on, a total of 40 different households before something stirred in Cindy, something that made her decide to make more of her life.
Born the eldest of six into an Old Order Mennonite family in Yatton, in rural Waterloo near Elmira, expectations for the child were limited by her upbringing.
Cindy wrote in her memoir how her parents thought she might possibly complete Grade 8 but they knew with certainly she would end up being a “submissive wife” with a whole passel of kids.
Cindy had seen her fair share of Mennonite women on the farm, working hard, raising families. She was having none of it and surprisingly, her parents supported their head strong, determined daughter. Cindy would eventually become a nurse and nursing instructor as well as a bit of a mother hen to dozens of student nurses at what was then called Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital School of Nursing.
Cindy’s rise to this position came after years of struggle.
In his eulogy, oldest son Jim Bolger recalled how his mother’s early days were shadowed by extreme poverty.
“Many would describe her family as ‘poor Nelson Martin’s family’ often dependent on others for food and money,” he said.
Cindy’s early life had indeed been tough, full of hard physical work with very little financial reward and much of what she did earn was given to help support her parents.
Jim spoke of how his mom would save to purchase something as simple as an ice cream bar. At Christmas, her only gift would be a single orange and rather than eating the delectable fruit immediately, Cindy would put it on her night table, eyeing the orange orb day after day and eating it only when there was danger of rotting.
This was not Cindy’s only experience with deprivation.
Her parents had moved many times as her father sought work, which meant the Martin children changed schools frequently, seven in total for Cindy. It would have been nearly impossible to keep up with her studies given this mobile lifestyle, then add the years where she was working in people’s homes instead of attending secondary school and it becomes all the more clear just what a remarkable woman Cindy was.
Well into her 20s, this uneducated country girl left the simple farm life and headed to Toronto. Sons Jim and Paul Bolger are unsure how she met the principal of the bible college where she completed courses while working as a domestic for his family. It was her only way to afford an education.
Jim said “she had mental toughness and resolve.”
As Cindy’s confidence grew she decided to upgrade her high
school credits; four years of secondary academics completed in one year.
Paul said Cindy’s father was so supportive of her achievement that he arranged for a bus load of Old Order Mennonites to travel to Toronto for her high school graduation.
Buoyed by such success, Cindy set her heights even higher. She upgraded her education at a U.S. bible college then came to Kitchener for training as a nurse.
In 2016 Cindy told a reporter, “When I was about seven, my aunt was in Freeport (tuberculosis) Sanatorium.
“I would visit and I was so impressed with what the nurses were doing, I said ‘I’m going to be a nurse.’”
Cindy entered the school of nursing in 1948 with a group of 27 young women who looked to her as a mother figure which made sense given she was nearly a decade older than these naïve, teenage girls.
After graduating Cindy joined the Mennonite church’s voluntary service team, working in a small and very poor Texas village before returning to Canada.
Her months in Texas were the only time Cindy ever missed the annual reunions held by the graduating Class of 1951.
In a 2016 interview for the class’s 65th anniversary, Cindy and her friends told a reporter they always applied the same code of secrecy as a trip to Vegas: “what happened in the hospital stays in the hospital.” Good thing because some of the stories they did share were a bit gross and usually involved bodily fluids.
Despite her failing health, devoted Cindy attended this year’s event, the 66th anniversary, held the day before her 96th birthday.
Jim said nursing was a calling for his mom, not just a career and having cared for at least 100 children while working with Mennonite families as a teenager, she had plenty of experience long before being able to don a nurse’s cap.
Paul added “she was passionate.”
Jim said “I never thought of my mom as progressive but she taught her nurses to be strong women.” She also encouraged them to wear pants if they wanted, in an era when women usually wore skirts, including Cindy. Ironically her sons say they never saw their mother in pants.
Cindy’s next major life event had been getting married and even in that she didn’t exactly follow Mennonite conventions.
She was 37 when she married Lorne Bolger, an unheard of age for a Mennonite woman, but then Cindy liked to be in control of her own destiny and Lorne was the perfect partner.
Lorne had been a tough young man, quick with his fists and always looking for a good time. This was not the man their sons ever knew largely because of Cindy’s influence and of course the strong belief system Lorne adopted after converting to the Mennonite faith.
The couple met at a Christian revival and fell in love, though they came from very different backgrounds.
Paul said he would have loved to be a fly on the wall the day his father brought this Old Order Mennonite girl home to meet his Irish Catholic family.
They were both independent minded individuals but their marriage would be strong and as Paul said, you never thought of one without thinking of the other, they were a tight, inseparable team.
They married in 1959 and lived simply, giving half their salary to charity and volunteering wherever they were needed.
The couple supported a Korean orphanage and a Laotian community and their dining room table was always open to hordes of visitors.
Lorne, who died in June of this year, along with Cindy helped people living on the fringes, such as the House of Friendship. Lorne was also a founder of Ray of Hope, an organization that supported young people in trouble with the law.
Lorne and Cindy both believed in being hands-on. They would bring home-cooked food to the youth facility, and on weekends, they’d pick up a few of the kids for a family day of picnicking and swimming in a nearby pond with Jim and Paul.
Fellow nursing graduate Isabel Kozicki said Cindy’s parents were the same and she remembers groups of nursing students from being invited to the family farm where the table would be loaded with home made goodies.
“She was a wonderful person,” said Isabel.
“She was a good nurse, a good all around person, kindly and so compassionate.”