City of Cypress

Sandie McCarthy has a radiant smile. It is almost as if she is lit from within, and perhaps she is, given her strong faith and her desire to make the world a more peaceful and loving place.

Sandie has many roles, including wife, mother, community volunteer, and philanthropist, but in her vision of herself, she is primarily an educator. This role started when she was a very young child and played school with her maternal grandmother, who was once a teacher in a oneroom schoolhouse. At first, “Grandma” was the teacher, but soon Sandie was the one reading and teaching the “lesson.” It was only natural that she would earn a bachelor’s degree in education (at Central Michigan University), with postgraduate studies toward a master’s degree at Wayne State University.

Her first teaching job was from 1966-69 at the Naval Base in Yokosuka, Japan, where her husband, Terry, was an officer at the Naval Dental Clinic; but once she and Terry learned that their son Trevor was profoundly deaf, Sandie shifted her attention to her son and his lifelong education, which continues to this day. She enrolled in a correspondence course offered by the John Tracy Clinic in Los Angeles to learn how best to teach Trevor.

When Terry was reassigned to the Navy Base in Long Beach, Sandie enrolled Trevor in the John Tracy Demonstration Nursery School, where she volunteered as a parent teacher and did fundraising for the next three years. At Trevor’s next school, the Oralingua School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Sandie again volunteered as a teacher assistant and served on the school’s board of directors for six years.

Her interest in helping deaf children led her to be part of the panel that wrote the State of California guidelines to implement the Federal “Handicapped Children Act of 1975,” now known as the “Disabilities Education Act.” These were the first guidelines that mandated mainstreaming of deaf children in their local schools.

Sandie was active in the Harbor Dental Society Auxiliary and the Long Beach Day Nursery School, holding leadership roles in both organizations. In 1984 she joined the Assistance League of Long Beach, where she continues to be an active member. In addition to being president, she has held a variety of other leadership positions.

In 1986 she was asked to join the board of directors of the Cypress College Foundation, the first woman named to the board. She spent six years as its secretary. Thirty-seven years later, Sandie is the longest-serving board member and remains an active participant in all aspects of the foundation. Over the years she has served on various committees; she was president from 2012 to 2014; she chaired Americana in both 2004 and 2006; and she helped establish the

President’s Circle. In 2017, she founded and continues to chair the Legacy Society, an arm of the foundation that obtains endowed gifts to provide financial security to the foundation for years to come. Thanks to Sandie’s leadership, the Legacy Society now has over 50 members.

Sandie describes herself as having “been on a faith-filled journey all my life.” Over the years she has been active at both St. Hedwig and St. Irenaeus Catholic churches, and in 2018 she began participating in the Orange County Catholic Cursillo Movement, a program that holds weekend retreats that help people grow deeper in faith. Drawing on her life-long desire to teach, Sandie now regularly gives presentations at these programs. She was recently a “rectora” (leader) of one of these weekends, which she calls “life-changing.”

Sandie’s teaching takes another form as well. For the past 20 years she has written and distributed a short daily inspiration to more than 150 people worldwide.

Terry and Sandie met at a “teen canteen” in the late 1950’s. They married right after college— which Sandie completed in three years. She says, “We’ve been dancing through life together ever since and are still sweethearts after all these years.”

They have three adult children: Brendan, Bronwyn and the aforementioned Trevor. Brendan, a software engineer, is married and lives with his family in San Francisco, while Bronwyn and her family have their home in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she is a doctor of veterinary medicine. Family memories include climbing Mt. Fuji in Japan and riding in a hot air balloon over the Serengeti Plains.

Sandie sees her “life’s work as being to educate myself and those I meet along the way. Together we are journeying toward fulfillment.” If you happen to meet Sandie on this path, you’ll recognize her by her smile.