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Westbury Grandmother to Earn Master's Degree
from C.W. Post
Neither deafness nor cancer dampen her determination
At 73, Virginia Sendor still doesn't know what she wants to
be when she grows up. Life, she says, holds far too many possibilities
to ever settle on one thing. Even so, the Master of Public Administration
degree she will receive from the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island
University on Mother's Day, May 14, 2000 will give her yet another
vehicle to explore those possibilities.
"I'm doing a lot of pro bono work," said Sendor,
who has been legally deaf since a childhood accident and who
reads lips and wears a hearing aid. "I've been called upon
as a consultant to families involved in end-of-life-care issues.
I was also asked to help head up the Long Island area of the
Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa, working for AIDS
awareness. We're trying to raise consciousness of the horrendous
activities going on in Sub-Saharan Africa."
Sendor has always been way ahead of her time. After earning
a bachelor's degree in English from Hunter College in 1948, she
joined an all-female production team at Photography Publishing
Corp., a magazine publisher. She met her husband, Bernard, at
an industry men's club meeting, and after they married, she stayed
home to raise their two children. Although a busy mother, she
was able to earn her master's degree in special education/rehabilitation
counseling from Hunter in 1959.
The following year, Sendor became seriously ill and doctors
gave her just three to six months to live. But Sendor recovered
and strengthened her determination to work for the good of the
community. She volunteered to work in a sheltered workshop with
students and young adults with cerebral palsy. She also served
for two summers at Camp Green Twigs in Roosevelt as the director
of the teenage volunteer program for campers with cerebral palsy.
In 1979, after the deaths of her mother and brother, Sendor
began an ongoing course of study in death and bereavement counseling.
She became a hospice volunteer and received extensive training
from experts in the field, including Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.
As a private, in-home rehabilitation counselor for people in
the advanced stages of cancer, she has conducted workshops and
lectures on death and dying and has trained mental health counselors
to understand and cope with their own feelings about death and
dying. The skills she gained gave her important insight several
years later, when she became the founder and executive director
of the Long Island Foundation for Hospice Care and Research,
Inc.
Sendor volunteered for 17 years with the Nassau-Suffolk Health
Systems Agency, Inc., serving on the Long-Term Care Planning
Task Force and the Hospice Sub-Committee. The Long Island Center
for Business and Professional Women honored her as "1991
Woman of the Year in Health Care." When the hospice closed
in 1991 due to lack of funding - and Sendor was diagnosed with
uterine cancer and lost a second brother to cancer - she co-authored
a book, Hospice and Palliative Care: Questions and Answers, published
by Scarecrow Press in 1997.
Sendor has been an inspiration to her professors and fellow
students. "We've all enjoyed Virginia because she is somebody
who decided to do something with her life," says Thomas
Webster, Ph.D., director of C.W. Post's health care and administration
program. "The other students relate to her. If Virginia
has the energy to do it, they can't help but get motivated."
Sendor lives in Westbury, N.Y., with her husband, Bernard,
who at 81 years of age, still works full time. Their daughter,
Jill, lives in Stamford, Conn., and their son, Jonathan, lives
in Chicago with his two children.
Sendor will receive her MPA degree at the 42nd annual commencement
ceremonies on Sunday, May 14. She will be joined by more than
1,400 students earning their bachelor's, master's and doctoral
degrees. C.W. Post is one of three residential campuses of Long
Island University, the eighth largest private university in the
United States. C.W. Post's 11,000 students can choose from a
broad range of undergraduate and graduate offerings, as well
as extensive continuing education programs. C.W. Post has awarded
more than 80,000 degrees in its 46-year history. The campus is
located on Northern Boulevard, (Route 25A) in Brookville.
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