U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis walked into his twin sons’ second-grade parent-teacher conference at Taylorville Elementary School. He noticed a fake hand with blood dangling from the ceiling above one of his sons’ desks.
“I’m reminding him (Davis’s son) that he needs to raise his hand before he talks,” Cyntha Dipert, the teacher of the class, told Davis and his wife, Shannon, that day.
Dipert, a teacher in the Taylorville School and adjunct developmental reading teacher at Lincoln Land Community College for 15 years, died July 17 in Memorial Medical Center at the age of 66.
She always lived by the motto, “Only worry about the thingsyou can change. Life is short. Enjoy every minute of it,” as she posted on her Facebook profile.
Dipert was a graduate of the University of Illinois at Springfield who enjoyed science, traveling, lighthouses, making new friends and especially making people smile and laugh.
She would use her humor in her reading and science classes, as noted above with the fake hand example.
Dipert believed students learned better when they asked questions.
“She was a perfect fit (for Lincoln Land), “said Marcy Durben, an administrative assistant at LLCC-Taylorville. “She challenged her students with a firm – but encouraging – hand. Her sense of humor and smile were contagious. Many times we would answer phone calls from her, and we head, ‘Hi, this is your P.I.TA. (pain in the ass) again.’”
But Durben said Dipert called herself this phrase. She was, in fact, the opposite.
“As a developmental teacher, she inspired students and deeply cared about their success,” said Dee Krueger, an assistant director at LLCC-Taylorville who knew Dipert for 15 years. “I will certainly miss her.”
She is not the only one who will miss her. Dipert made an impact on so many lives, including her students and colleagues.
“She made an impact in my life that she may have never known,” Davis said, while giving a memorial speech on the floor of the House of Representatives on July 30.
Davis, who was originally from Des Moines, Iowa, moved to Taylorville 37 years ago. He said he was a shy second-grader who was afraid to talk with anyone.
But despite this, Dipert, who was working in his classroom, helped him out of his shell by talking to him one-on-one. She knelt down on her knees beside his desk to welcome him to the class.
“That confidence Mrs. Cynthia Dipert gave me that day, was confidence that built up throughout my elementary school, junior high and high school,” Davis said. “Maybe that gesture of compassion Cynthia gave me that day helped lead me here to this great institution we call the House of Representatives.”
Dipert, though, treated everyone with respect.
“I remember calling her Cindy and being informed she was not Cindy. She was Cynthia. She said it was as if she was princess. And I thought, ‘Oh, boy!,’” Krueger said, reflecting on the first time she met Dipert. “But over the years, that first observation was farthest from the truth.
“Cynthia was full of life, kind, thoughtful and quite humorous at times.”
She was also known for “lifelong learning,” a contagious smile and her fashion.
“She had a fashion sense beyond compare,” said Durben, whose children were students in Dipert’s class at Taylorville Junior High. “We (my colleagues and I) joked with her about never seeing her in the same outfit twice.”
She will definitely be missed be all the people she touched.
“I stand here on the floor of this great institution (the House of Representatives) to tell her thank you, and to tell her thank you for the services that she provided for so many people in central Illinois,” Davis said.
Ryan Wilson can be reached at [email protected] or 217-786-2311.
