HANCOCK — Christmas came a week early for Maribel Cypher this year.

The Hancock resident, a licensed nursing assistant at Harborside Healthcare’s Pheasant Wood in Peterborough, completed a journey that’s taken her from her native Philippines to the United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, Israel, on to Boston and then Hancock. That 24-year odyssey reached a milestone when she became a U.S. citizen on Dec. 16 at a ceremony in Concord.

“God bless America,” Cypher said Monday, as she looked back on her long road to citizenship. “I’m very, very happy. It’s been a long journey for me, a lot of sacrifices for so many years. I was shedding tears of joy.”

Ever since she left the Philippines in 1987, Cypher has been regularly sending $500 a month to support her mother and other relatives in the Pacific nation. That’s a Philippine tradition, said her husband, Bob Cypher of Hancock, who married Maribel in 2007.

“I’ve sent my daughter and five nephews to college,” Maribel said. “I’ve never stopped working. I’ve always told myself I would always help.”

Maribel said she grew up in a strict Catholic home in a province of the Philippines.
“We were not rich, not poor. Every Sunday I would go to church. The family had a small grocery store, where I worked. That helped us.”

With strong support from her mother, Maribel went to Aquinas University in the Philippine city of Legazpi, where she graduated in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. Her background, she said, helped her start a restaurant business and several side ventures.

“I was not satisfied. I’m very ambitious,” she said. “I wanted to be a nurse, I had a lot of dreams. I said, ‘This is not enough.’ My goal was to give back the things my mother gave to me. I wanted to help my mother, my family.”

So in 1987 she closed the restaurant and moved to the United Arab Emirates, where she worked as caregiver for children.

“I didn’t know the culture, tradition, or language,” she said. “I bought a book, started to learn Arabic.”

She said she focused on learning the culture of her new land.

“I even ate camel, though I didn’t really like it.”

After her two-year contract ended, Maribel returned briefly to the Philippines, where she worked for a time in hotels and offices. Then she spent three years in Taiwan, working as a supervisor in textile mills.

“I kept sending money home,” she said. “That was always my goal.”

In 2000, her journey took her to Israel, where she worked as a fulltime caregiver to an elderly resident of Jerusalem.

“I didn’t know Hebrew. I had to buy a book, do some studying,” she said. “I learned the traditions, all the prayers.”

While in Israel, she met Grand Rebbe Y.A. Korff, a leader of the Hasidic Jewish community in Boston, and he eventually hired her as a nanny for his three children.

“So I got an opportunity to go to the U.S.A.,” Maribel recalls. “That was my dream.”

She said she learned a lot while working in Boston from 2002 to 2007. But the Hasidic community in which she found herself is very conservative and she said she became lonely.

“I was a bit sad. I had no friends,” she recalled. With a bit of hesitation, she decided to put a link on a website, AgeMatch.com, which specializes in matching people of different ages but similar interests.

“That’s where I met Bob,” she said. “He contacted me, and I just replied. He asked if I had a phone number. I said no, and he sent me a cell phone. We talked and developed a friendship. Soon we were talking for hours.”

They met in person on Jan. 28, 2007, a date Maribel remembers clearly — “We really fell in love, as if there’s glue on us,” is how she put it.

Bob Cypher, a retired journalist, lived in New York and is quite a bit older than Maribel.
“We have a 24-year gap,” Maribel said. “He asked me about it. I said, “I don’t care. Age doesn’t matter to me.”

The couple married in April, about three months after they met online — “It was on Good Friday,” Maribel said — and Bob bought a house in Hancock. Maribel went back to school, fulfilling another dream by training at the American Red Cross in Keene to become a licensed nursing assistant.

In January 2008, Maribel was hired at Pheasant Wood.

“I love this kind of job,” she said. “I love to give my skills to take care of the elderly.”

She also helped care for Bob’s elderly mother for three years.

“I loved it,” she said. “I loved her, and I love helping.”

“She really wanted to care for my mother,” Bob Cypher said. “Maribel has very strong family feelings. They grew to love each other. Her care was absolutely incredible.”

Maribel and Bob both said the road to citizenship was a challenge. She applied in September 2008, and started listening to a CD with information about American history and government as she drove back and forth to work.

“It’s a long journey,” she said. “I needed to take a 100-test question.” She passed that test on Nov. 22 this year and on Dec. 16, was one of 82 immigrants from 37 countries sworn in as a U.S. citizen at a ceremony in Concord.

After years learning the ways of the Arab world, Taiwan and Israel, Maribel has obviously become familiar with American traditions. She was proud to pose for a photo with Gov. John Lynch, and understands the sanctity of the ballot box.

“I don’t want to tell what party I’m in,” she said. “I’m happy to vote. I want that America will be in good shape. I want this country to make progress.”

And she’s looking forward to an upcoming trip back to Philippines, where Bob will meet her family for the first time, including her daughter, who has been approved to emigrate to this country.

The holiday presents going to her homeland have been packed and shipped and now she’s getting ready to celebrate her first Christmas as an American citizen.

“All I’ve really asked for has been answered,” Maribel said.

This article appears in the Dec. 22, 2011, edition of the Ledger-Transcript.