Cynthia Anne Baine De Maagd, 88, died on Saturday, February 8th, 2025 at Wings of Hope Hospice in Allegan, Michigan, after a brief battle with brain cancer, surrounded by family and friends. A native of Memphis, Tennessee, and Paragould, Arkansas, Cynthia was the daughter of Cecil Thomas Baine and Anna Evans Baine. Cynthia's parents died in 1975. Her younger brother, Thomas Albert Baine, died in 1993. Her husband, Paul Robert de Maagd, died in 2013.

A life-long musician, Cynthia began playing piano at age five, which led to numerous recitals and musicianship adjudications and, in the 6th grade, her own solo piano recital. Cynthia was the accompanist for her high school choir, and as a senior performed another solo piano recital and earned a diploma in piano performance and theory from Rhodes College. She also sang for three years with the Memphis-area radio program "Young America Sings". While in college at Baylor University, Cynthia sang in choral groups the Baylor Bards and the Rhapsody in White, directed by her beloved musical mentor and Holland, Michigan native Martha Barkema. In the Pigskin Revue, she directed her Chi Omega sorority and sang as a soloist in their presentation of excerpts from "The King and I". As an adult in West Michigan, Cynthia played piano and sang at many area weddings, funerals and worship services, including at Hope Church and Saugatuck United Methodist Church. While teaching with the Hamilton Public Schools, she directed the high school choir. Cynthia and Paul sang for decades with the Third Reformed Church choir, the Holland Chorale, and the Evergreen Chorale. She studied piano at Hope College with Charles Aschbrenner, and frequently presented piano programs in the Holland community, often with Brenda Bullard as a duo called the Southern Accents.

Cynthia graduated with honors from Central High School in Memphis in 1954, receiving a first-place scholarship award from the Memphis Civitan Club. She graduated from Baylor in 1958 with a BA in English, French and History. While at Baylor, she won first place in an essay contest, with the prize of a trip to Hollywood, California and an appearance on the "Queen for a Day" TV show. As a Baylor alumna, she proudly wore the green and gold to represent Baylor at the inauguration of five presidents of Hope College.

As a French teacher with the Holland Public Schools, she was awarded a teaching grant from the Holland Education Foundation. During the 1980s, she received a scholarship from the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF) to study French language and culture at the Faculté des Lettres at the University of Avignon, Provence, France. During her retirement, many in the Holland community enjoyed Cynthia's history presentations about Empress Elisabeth "Sissi" of Austria, an interest that began when she and Paul studied with the Hope College Vienna Summer School.

On March 5, 1960, at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Cynthia married Paul, a native of Grand Rapids, Michigan. They met during college years, while working summer jobs at Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior. Paul graduated summa cum laude from Michigan Technological University in 1958, earning a BS in Civil Engineering. In 1959, he received his officer's commission in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. During Paul's Army service, the couple lived in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and at Lincoln Air Force Base in Lincoln, Nebraska. After Paul's Army career ended, they settled in Holland, where Paul earned his Master of Divinity degree at Western Theological Seminary and Cynthia began her teaching career in Hamilton. Following his seminary graduation, Paul returned to a career in civil engineering. They were married for 53 years, until Paul's death in 2013.

Starting with her first job at 16 in Gerber's Department Store in Memphis, Cynthia worked every year from 1952 until the year before her death. Following her graduation from Baylor, Cynthia lived in Dallas, Texas, working first with the Buyer Training Program at Neiman Marcus, and later with Northwest Orient Airlines. During Paul's Army career, Cynthia worked as an executive secretary in Colorado Springs at the Garden of the Gods Resort and Golf Club and in Lincoln. In the mid-1960s, she earned her teaching credentials from Hope College. After teaching with the Hamilton Public Schools, she joined the Holland Public Schools, where she taught French and English for 28 years, and was a contributor to Heinle & Heinle Publishers' French language textbooks. "Madame De Maagd"'s French students earned many AATF awards, and every year her English students published their own book of poetry with their original compositions. For over 20 years, Cynthia marched with the Holland Public Schools' 7th-grade band during Tulip Time.

Following her retirement from teaching, Cynthia worked for 13 years at Lokker Rutgers in Holland, where she scripted, narrated and modeled in several women's fashion shows, and for 17 years as an innkeeper at the Maplewood Hotel in Saugatuck, Michigan. She also served as pianist for the Saugatuck United Methodist Church. As a former member of the Hope Academy of Senior Professionals (HASP), she served on the editorial board of the HASP Review. One of her articles was chosen for publication in the HASP Review's 25th anniversary edition. She was also a member of the Baylor Line Foundation, Century Club of Holland, the Chi Omega women's sorority, the local, state and national Education Associations, the PEO Sisterhood, the Piano Fest Group, the Tuesday Evening Book Club, and the Woman's Literary Club.

Cynthia is survived by two sons, seven grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, a sister-in-law, a niece, a nephew, and a cat: son Calvin Baine De Maagd and his wife Mary Kellogg-De Maagd, of South Haven, Michigan, and their sons Matthew Paul Kellogg-De Maagd and Matthew's wife, Aubree, and Jared Zachary Kearns and Jared's wife, Jessica, and their daughter, Ella, and son, Zachary; son Christian Evans deMaagd and his wife, Betsy Herring, of Seattle, Washington, and their sons Charlie, Amos and Roy Paul; sister-in-law Mary Louise Ferraris Baine, of Memphis, and her daughter Tommye Lynn Baine Tilson and Lynn's husband, Paul, and son Thomas Albert (Chip) Baine Jr., and his daughter, Caroline, and son, Charles; and Cynthia's 18-year-old cat, Velvet, who was re-homed a week before Cynthia's death.

To honor Cynthia's deep and abiding dislike of Michigan winters, memorial services will be held in the spring, at Third Reformed Church in Holland on Friday, April 25th at 11:00 a.m., followed by a Southern Tea reception in the Fellowship Hall; and at Grace-St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Memphis on Saturday, May 10th at 10:00 a.m., followed by a Southern Tea reception in Trezevant Hall from 10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m., followed by a private ceremony at Forest Hills Cemetery Midtown where, with the inurnment of her cremains with her beloved mother, Cynthia will return home after so many years up north.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations can be made to Wings of Hope Hospice in Allegan, Michigan, or to Harbor Humane Society in West Olive, Michigan.