Cynthia Root Carter

CYNTHIA CARTER OF MEDINA, WASHINGTON

DIES IN HER HOME OF 63 YEARS

Cynthia Carter

Cynthia Root Carter, born in Hood River, Oregon six months to the day after the Titanic sank in 1912, died on March 22, 2016 at her home in Washington State.  The journey between its launch and its conclusion 137 miles away took Cynthia’s life to every continent except Australia.  Afraid to travel alone more than a few local miles behind the wheel of her car, she traveled often, fearlessly and enthusiastically, when her husband, the late Robert S. Carter, escorted her.

Cynthia visited far too many destinations to include here, but listing only the places she visited that start with the letter “A” (and only some of these) suggests the scope of her travels:

Afghanistan

Angkor Wat (and much of Asia)

Alaska

Antarctica

The Antilles, Greater and Lesser

Antalya in Anatolia

Africa (north coast only)

Atlantic Ocean, westbound by sail

Cynthia and Bob first met as young children vacationing with their families on Bailey Island off the coast of Maine.  They learned early to love the sea and sailed extensively, initially in their small sloops and eventually, starting in 1967, in their 44–foot ketch.  Following the custom of down-east mariners, the ketch, whose layout Cynthia helped Bob design, bore the name of its captain’s sweetheart, Cynthia R, on her transom.  And out of their deep love for the island and its water, Cynthia’s family placed the bulk of their Bailey Island property, including the undeveloped head of the island’s Mackerel Cove, in permanent nature conservancy.

Cynthia’s family roots were firmly planted in old eastern U.S. soil.  Cynthia’s mother, Eleanor Hastings Root, an aspiring opera singer, descended from George Washington’s maternal grandfather by his first wife.  Her great-grandfather, George F. Root, was a leading composer of popular music in the mid-19^th century.  His The Battle Cry of Freedom and Tramp, Tramp, Tramp became rallying standards for Union troops fighting the Civil War.  Cynthia’s musical gene, though she never exploited it, gave her a uniquely rich and lilting singing voice.  Still, when recordings or other singers prompted her, she could and did softly sing many dozens of Broadway tunes and other popular standbys, always word for word and in perfect pitch, into her second century.

Cynthia replanted her eastern roots when a record freeze wiped out her family’s young apple orchard at the foot of Mount Hood in 1917-18, forcing the family’s permanent return to New York City.  She attended the Packer School and graduated from Wellesley College, majoring in art history, in 1934.  She worked as an assistant curator of the Brooklyn Museum of Art for several years before marrying Bob on New Year’s Eve, 1937.

She is survived by her son Lief Hastings Carter and his wife, Marilyn Vickers, of Athens, Georgia, and by her daughter Delight Carter Willing of Bainbridge Island, Washington.  Her grandchildren Stephen Hastings Carter, his wife Kelly Miller and Cynthia’s two great-granddaughters, of Brooklyn, N.Y., also survive her as do Robert Benjamin Carter and his wife, Susan Kwasniak, of Dallas, Texas, and Laura Elizabeth Carter of Athens, Georgia.

She returned to the Pacific Northwest in 1951 when General of America Insurance (now Safeco) in Seattle hired Bob Carter to begin a division of marine insurance for the company.  They purchased two acres on the eastern shore of Lake Washington in 1952, where they kept sheep, daughter Delight kept a horse, and one year raised a steer, though in this case even its hamburger was tough.

Typical for her generation, Cynthia’s primary mission in life was to care for her husband and children.  She would never have chosen without Bob’s determined planning to “sail” their sloop Carib from New York City to Chicago via rivers, canals, and other inland waterways in 1949. Nor would she have chosen to be the first (and only) mate on the first small cruising sailboat ever recorded to have circumnavigated Vancouver Island, or to cruise the Mediterranean and much of western Europe on Cynthia R for over a decade.  Among other adventures, they cruised by various rivers and canals, traversing hundreds of locks in the process, from the Med to and around the Baltic sea and western Norway,  Then they retraced their steps.  In the Med they discovered a partially sunken city on the southern coast of Turkey.  Archeologists had lost track of the site’s existence.  Bob and Cynthia supported archeological research at the site for the ensuing 20 years, and these investigations determined that the site was ancient Aperlae, a producer of murex snail royal blue dye highly desired by Roman nobility.

 She made these and many other voyages with and for Bob, but her real passion apart from her family remained art.  In her middle 70s, when the annual summer voyages began to shorten, Cynthia took up Sumi-E oriental drawing and water coloring.  She made quick progress and came to quietly admire her works, yet she proceeded merely to put them in folders and move on.  But relatives insisted on framing the best works–of a pine branch with a few clusters of needles, two columbine flowers, a single iris stalk and blossom–and putting them on their walls.

Those who knew her found it hard to reconcile Cynthia’s reluctance to share her lovely singing voice and her artistic talents with her outgoing social graces.  Her empathy for both strangers in need and those close to her was limitless.  Born before women had a universal right to vote, she was an avid supporter of the League of Women Voters and a lifelong Democrat.

To call her a “people person” understates her nature.  Cynthia was, to her core, instinctively and preternaturally a superb hostess both at home and on the sea.  Until her last weeks, and long after arthritis confined her to the wheelchair in which she occasionally nodded off in her last few years, arriving visitors, often unexpected (at least in her mind), would instantly get an alert and smiling welcome they didn’t forget.  Countless times her offspring heard people, even those who who knew her only slightly, say “We just love your mother. She’s amazing.”  The offspring heartily agree.