Cynthia Merriam Adams died unexpectedly of natural causes on the morning of Monday, March 28, 2022, at her home in Moscow. She was 59. She suffered from heart disease and was a cancer survivor.
Cynthia was born Aug. 2, 1962, in Evanston, Ill., to Alan Parkhurst Merriam and Barbara Williams Merriam. She was the baby of three sisters, joining Ginny and Paige. Her father was a professor at Northwestern University. When she was just a few weeks old, the family moved to Bloomington, Ind., where her father had taken a new position as a professor at Indiana University.
Cynthia grew up in a neighborhood of young families, where she enjoyed riding bikes and exploring the nearby cow pastures with her friends. Her family spent summers at their cabin on Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park, which became her North Star of home. She hiked and fished and went on backpacking expeditions with her family and enjoyed splitting wood with her dad, swimming in the lake, roasting marshmallows and snuggling around beach fires at night, and tagging along with her big sisters and their beloved cousin Mark.
Cynthia’s parents divorced when she was 12 years old, and she and her mother moved to Pullman, where her mother joined the faculty at Washington State University. Cynthia graduated from Pullman High School in 1980.
When she was 18, Cynthia met Kevin Adams, of nearby Moscow. They formed a lifelong partnership and were married May 12, 1986. They enjoyed the outdoors together, snowmobiling and four-wheeling, and they loved spending time and boating at Kevin’s parents’ cabins on Lake Coeur d’Alene, Kevin’s aunt and uncle’s cabin on Priest Lake, and at Dworshak Reservoir on the Clearwater River. Kevin and Cynthia had two children, Nichole Michelle in 1988 and Dain Alan in 1993. Nichole is a teacher in San Antonio, Texas, and Dain works in real estate in Spokane. Cynthia was very proud of their accomplishments.
Cynthia attended Kinman Business College and worked in a variety of jobs requiring organizational skills, project management and linear thinking. She very much enjoyed her years as a travel agent, and she loved her job as part of the team that produced the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival at the University of Idaho. The job Cynthia was most fond of was her most recent, working side-by-side with good friends as a contract specialist in the Purchasing Services Office at the University of Idaho. Her colleagues appreciated her organizational skills and her can-do attitude in meeting the challenge of purchasing odd items for U of I during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cynthia loved animals, especially her cats, and she loved winter and the vista of the Moscow Hills behind the Adams’ house outside Moscow. She never forgot a birthday, and hers were always the first birthday and Christmas packages to arrive. She had a thriving competitive spirit that came out when she played board games, which she passed on to her children, along with her absolute love of all types of music. She never failed to call and sing the birthday song into her family’s voicemails, and she had an impressive memory for pop music trivia. She was a talented dancer from a young age. She was very much looking forward to celebrating at Dain’s wedding in July.
Cynthia is survived by her husband, Kevin; her daughter, Nichole (Jonathan Fuller); her son, Dain (Meranda Pfaff); her sisters, Ginny (Brad Layton) and Paige (Phil McMurray); her mother, Barbara; sister- and brother-in-law Julie and Wayne Jordanger and their daughter, Hunter; her six cousins; and her friends and co-workers. Cynthia’s co-workers will celebrate her life with a reception on the U of I campus. Her family will gather in Glacier Park later this summer and include a memorial hike up Mount Brown at the head of Lake McDonald. We will remember her sense of humor, her drive and her love of life.
