╧PARA ╟PAR@ ` ÅTEXT ` üAlden, Cynthia May Westover
1862╨1931
social worker and journalist
Born on May 31, 1862, in Afton, Iowa, Cynthia Westover was reared largely by her father, a geologist, in western mining camps. She developed skills with horses and rifles at a young age. She attended and later taught school in Denver, completed a normal course at the University of Colorado, and in 1882 made her way to New York City to seek a career as an opera singer. Failing at that, she won appointment as a U.S. customs inspector in 1887, and in 1890 she became secretary to the New York City commissioner of street cleaning. In the latter capacity she invented and patented an improved street cleaner╒s handcart and a self emptying dump cart. In 1892, with C. F. Ober, she published Manhattan, Historic and Artistic. In 1894 she secured a position as editor of the women╒s department of the New York Recorder, and in 1896 she published Bushy, or Child Life in the Far West, based on her own early life.
In August 1896 she married John Alden, later editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. About that time she began the practice of sending Christmas cards to shut-ins; soon she was passing on Christmas gifts as well, and in 1896 a group of fellow journalists organized themselves as the Sunshine Society to carry on the practice. Her column in the Recorder brought additional members, and she spread word of the movement when she moved to the New York Tribune in 1897 and to the Ladies Home Journal in 1899.
On March 9, 1900, the International Sunshine Society was incorporated; Cynthia Westover was to remain president for the rest of her life. In 1902 the society established a sanatorium in Bensonhurst to care for blind children (in 1917 it became Harbor Hospital), and in 1905 a nursery and a kindergarten for blind children were established in Brooklyn. In 1910 the Sunshine Arthur Home for blind babies was established in Summit, New Jersey, and over a period of years the society╒s efforts led to legislation providing care for blind infants and children in 18 states. She published Women╒s Ways of Earning Money, 1904, and The Baby Blind, 1915. She died in Brooklyn, New York, on January 8, 1931. By that time the International Sunshine Society counted 500 local branches in 38 states and 8 foreign nations and operated hospitals and homes for the blind and orphans, summer camps, lodges, facilities for working women, and other services.
