Lucinda Jan Gates

Care and Rehabilitation Center. Preceded in death by parents, Robert and Betty J. Gates as well as

special friend, Dr. Charlotte Huddle. Survived by brother, Robert Dickerson Gates (Nancy); nephews,

Matthew and Travis and families; her wonderful cousins; as well as numerous loving friends and

colleagues present throughout her long illness. Cindy, a graduate of Maumee High School, attended

Kent State University and the Ohio State University majoring in elementary and environmental

education and Journalism. While living in New Hampshire, she used her journalistic skills at WGIR talk

and news radio and penned the children's story "TOBY the CATERPILLAR." She was Director of Resident

Environmental Education for Newark (Ohio) City Schools (1970-1975), worked for the Ohio Department

of Natural Resources where she developed Smokey the Bear as we know him today at the Ohio State

Fair, was active in Girl Scouts of America from her teen years when she was selected to attend the

Roundup in Idaho to her adult years when she accompanied a group of the finest campers from Ohio to

Girl Scout Center West in Wyoming as an adult counselor/volunteer. A life-long OSU Buckeye fan, Cindy

arranged for the OSU Marching Band to play at the funeral of her father, the former director of the OSU

ALUMNI BAND. No doubt she is strumming her 12 string guitar and singing harmony with him to

"Carmen Ohio" now!

To celebrate the life of this wonderful person, go to a woods or a park or any place where you can

connect with the natural world, send a donation to The Nature Conservancy or The Sierra Club, support

the EPA, pay the fee that will allow a child to go to camp, plant a tree in Cindy's honor, contribute to the

Dawes Arboretum in her memory, or perform any act that will help preserve the environment for future

generations of children and the parents who love them so much.

A poem by John Moffitt best captures Cindy's life philosophy about the world and the people she knew

in it:

TO LOOK at ANYTHING

To look at any thing,

If you would know that thing.

You must look at it long:

To look at this green and say

"I have seen spring in these

Woods," will not do—you must

Be the thing you see:

You must be the dark snakes of

Stems and ferny plumes of leaves.

You must enter in

To the small silences between

The leaves,

You must take your time

And touch the very peace

They issue from.

A special thank you to the wonderful people with Capitol City Hospice and to the Neptune Society which

is handling the final arrangements for Cindy and has provided this space for her obituary.

You are invited to share thoughts, memories, stories, or whatever you are moved to say about Cindy here for the next 12 months.

Cindy will be buried with her parents in the Dickerson Family Cemetery in Cadiz, Ohio where a Buckeye tree, planted in her honor, will shade her parent's graves.

For more information about this historic family cemetery, visit http://scottumc.net/scott-memorial-united-methodist-church-cadiz-ohio-about-us/scott-memorial-united-methodist-church-cadiz-ohio-historic-dickerson-church.