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Letter to the editor

A teacher who took on life with serenity

By STEPHANIE HAYES, Times Staff Writer
Published August 17, 2007

LARGO -- She wanted her students to explore possibility.

She'd give them a tea strainer. It could be a toy. It could sift sand and drip water. It could shovel.

It could be anything.

* * *

Cynthia Verzi was born in Costa Rica. Her parents, Christian missionaries, ran an orphanage. The family lived on the side of a volcano.

In the United States, she taught migrant farm children. In 1981, she and then-husband Bill opened the Green Cabbage School, a Largo preschool.

It was a converted hot dog restaurant that looked like a motel. It had a garden and animals - a pony, rabbits, chickens, goats, snakes and lizards.

She'd sing, "Two hand push!" The kids would scoot chairs, circling around Ms. Cynthia.

* * *

She wanted her daughters to be calm.

Once, her youngest knocked over a jar of mayonnaise. It shattered everywhere.

Cynthia heard the crash. Schandra Verzi, her daughter, panicked.

"Don't worry," Cynthia told her. "We'll clean this up together."

* * *

Cynthia and Bill divorced in the '90s. Green Cabbage closed.

The school, and everything it represented, meant so much. Cynthia felt deep loss.

She turned to Buddhism, which Bill had introduced her to during their marriage.

"It brought her life together," said her daughter, Andrea Verzi.

She wanted higher consciousness.

In 2000, she traveled to India and became a Tibetan Buddhist nun. Years later, she became a bhiksuni, a fully ordained nun.

She shaved her long, blond hair. She started wearing maroon and saffron robes.

Cynthia had a new name: Bhiksuni Konchog Drolkar Karuna.

* * *

Back in St. Petersburg, she opened Village Montessori school, which she ran until being diagnosed with cancer in November.

She kept her faith separate from work, elaborating only if people asked. She didn't wear full robes to school, just maroon and saffron clothes.

But during meditation, her whole body lit up, her daughter said.

Buddhism ignited her.

* * *

She wanted levity.

"Do I have a bug on my nose?" she'd ask students. They'd shriek with laughter and call her silly.

She stayed light, even at the end. She died at age 62 at home -- an efficiency apartment built by her ex-husband. It was attached to a special building that stayed in the family while everything else changed:

Green Cabbage School.

Biography: Cynthia Verzi
Born: Jan. 18, 1945
Died: Aug. 13, 2007
Survivors: Former husband Bill; daughters, Andrea and Schandra; grandchildren, Pema and Apollo; three brothers.
Services: 5 p.m. Saturday, Unitarian Universalists of Clearwater, 2470 Nursery Road. Donations to Suncoast Hospice.

[Last modified August 21, 2007, 19:58:58]