Grobmeier at the Miles for Maddog race in 2023. Cynthia Grobmeier, Ph.D.
Cynthia “Cyndi” Grobmeier, Ph.D. is a treasure within the Saint Xavier community, as well as a dear friend of my family.
I had the pleasure of meeting Grobmeier long before I enrolled at SXU in 2018 and every time I’ve seen her since then, she has met me with a big smile and a signature jovial demeanor.
Grobmeier graduated from SXU in 1992 and returned to SXU a number of years later, working part-time as an adjunct professor before becoming a full-time professor six years ago.
In addition to being a full-time professor in the Communications department, Grobmeier is also the president of a Non-Profit Organization that advocates for organ donation, the Maddog Strong Foundation.
The foundation was started after Grobmeier’s younger daughter, Maddie, tragically passed away due to an asthma attack she suffered a few nights before, just one day after her eighteenth birthday.
After a car accident Maddie had been involved in just three months prior to her passing, she voiced a strong desire to register as an organ donor, which she never got the chance to do while she was alive.
When Grobmeier and her husband Frank were faced with the decision to take their daughter off of life support, they also had to decide whether or not Maddie’s organs would be donated.
“Do we just pull her off life support and let her pass peacefully,” Grobmeier recounts what was going through her mind at the time, “or, you know, go through the process of trying to see if she could be an organ donor? We knew what we had to fight for. We had to honor her decision.”
Grobmeier went on to say that the decision has given her and her husband so much peace.
Even then, I couldn’t help but wonder what prompted Grobmeier and her husband to create an entire organization dedicated to spreading awareness about the importance of registering as an organ donor.
“That was all Frank!” Grobmeier laughs in her answer. “It was all his idea at first. As soon as he said, ‘Do you want to do this?’ I was all for it. We kind of knew that she had kind of left us this mission to carry on.”
With that, the Maddog Strong Foundation was born. The Grobmeiers named their foundation after a nickname lovingly given to Maddie by her father when she was just an infant.
In addition to the reason behind the organization’s founding itself, I found the significance behind the yearly Giving Tree Ceremony that Maddog Strong every summer to be especially heartwarming.
“We really think that having a living tribute to organ donors just made so much sense,” Grobmeier said of the ceremony.
She elaborated that the ceremony of planting a tree in honor of an organ donor “continu[es] the cycle of life and creat[es] that permanent living tribute to organ donors,” which I found to be a particularly beautiful and touching way to commemorate people who donate their organs to people in need
One thing Grobmeier hoped to accomplish when creating Maddog Strong was to educate those who are against organ donation as to why it is so important.
Unfortunately, there is a systemic distrust of our healthcare system and of organ donation in the United States. A major contributing factor as to why this is is the racist medical malpractices that have occurred over the course of our country’s history.
According to an article published by the National Library of Medicine, research has proven that Black and Latino people utilize medical services on a much smaller level than White people.
The Mayo Clinic has an extremely informative article posted that debunks many common myths about organ donation that steer people from becoming donors.
Another goal of the Maddog Strong Foundation is to inform people about organ donation and its importance, as organ donation isn’t commonly spoken about on any level.
I was enlightened as to why this may be the case during my interview with Grobmeier, where she noted a widespread and unhealthy fear of death in humans.
“It’s not something [people] talk about because it’s connected to death, or at least that’s how they view it,” she stated.
The Maddog Strong Foundation is not only a Non-Profit with a beautiful, yet tragic, origin story, but is also extremely important in educating others about the life-saving process of organ donation.
Grobmeier’s work in creating this foundation is a testament to her genuine kindness and care for humanity, and I believe that Maddog Strong is nothing short of a beautiful creation that undoubtedly has and will continue to make a positive difference in our world.
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