Cynthia Louise Doherty died at her Eastham home on Nov. 26, 2024 after a long struggle with heart disease. She was 74.
The oldest of four children, Cindy was born on July 2, 1950 to the late James and Louise Meads in their house on Baker Avenue in Provincetown, where she grew up. Her sister Audrey Lee died of spinal meningitis in 1958, after which Cindy’s mother “sheltered her,” Cindy’s daughter Amy said.
After her siblings Amanda and Jay were born, Cindy loved mothering them, and the siblings remained close throughout her life. “Family was the most important thing to her,” Amy said.
Cindy’s father, the Provincetown fire chief, started the town’s rescue squad and established a junior firefighters club called “the Sparkys.” Cindy and the other Sparkys helped around the firehouse in small ways, sweeping floors and emptying ashtrays.
At Provincetown High School, Cindy played basketball, field hockey, softball, and volleyball. She sang in the glee club and served on the Long Pointer business staff. In the class prophecy section of the yearbook, her classmates wrote: “Cindy Meads has found her heaven. Now she’s knitting boot(s)ies for seven.”
That was a reference to her high school sweetheart, David “Bootsie” Carreiro, whom she married soon after graduation in 1968. The couple had begun dating secretly when Cindy was 14 and Bootsie was 17. Their four children were born between 1969 and 1979; the couple divorced in the early 1980s.
In 1989, Cindy married David Doherty, and two years later their daughter, Amanda, was born. In 1995, the family moved to Bellingham for better educational and social opportunities for Amanda, but the marriage broke down, and Cindy returned to Provincetown in 2006. After graduating from Bellingham High School, Amanda joined her mother in Provincetown.
In 2016, Amanda and her fiancé, Steven Caminiti, had a daughter, Ayla. Amanda died in Provincetown on Jan. 1, 2017 at age 25.
“Through everything, my mom always was a positive person,” said Amy. “ ‘There will be a better day,’ she would say. That’s just how she was.”
Cindy worked at the A&P on Shank Painter Road and was a waitress at Tip for Tops’n and Stormy Harbor. For more than 20 years, she was a bartender at the VFW — during the time when it was a center of Provincetown’s community life, not only as a watering hole but as a venue for weddings, anniversary parties, and after-school activities for kids.
Cindy’s positive attitude and sense of humor served her and the community well in those years. “She was quick-witted,” Amy said. “She always had a comeback, and fortunately for us, she passed on her sense of humor to her kids. Her smile would light up the room.”
Cindy was an avid crafter and had an eye for design and decorating. Her special talent was single-stroke painting, a decorative technique in which two or three colors are loaded onto one brush to get shading, highlighting, and blending of color in a single stroke. She painted murals in the homes of family and friends; a gate on a family home across from Sal’s in the West End shows her handiwork.
She was skilled at reupholstering furniture, and she had a special love for decorating family and friends’ houses at Christmas. “Christmas was her thing,” Amy said. Cindy called her design and craft work “my therapy.”
She is survived by her sister, Amanda Morris, and husband Barry of Truro and her brother, James “Jay” Meads, of Truro; her children, Joel Carreiro and wife Serena of St. Albans, Maine, Che Carreiro and spouse Jill Lambrou of Provincetown, Audra Mayfield and husband Matthew of Brewster, and Amy Houghton and husband Jack of New Bedford; her son-in-law, Steven Caminiti of Canaan, N.Y.; her grandchildren, Ariel Carreiro, Dylan Carreiro, Brooke Carreiro, Nathaniel Czyoski, Jocelyn Pelletier, Ella Mayfield, Ethan Mayfield, and Ayla Caminiti; and her great-grandchildren, Arianna Allmon, Sylas Suonpera, Alaya Suonpera, and Brayden Dodd.
She was predeceased by her sister Audrey Lee and her daughter Amanda Doherty.
Cindy had several “bonus” children and grandchildren. One of them, Sadie Ziemba, wrote in an online tribute: “Your daughter brought me into your home, but you brought me into your family and became my second mother. I am honored to consider myself one of your bonus children.”
Services were held on Dec. 6, 2024 at Nickerson Funeral Home in Wellfleet and on Dec. 7 at St. Peter the Apostle Church in Provincetown, followed by burial at St. Peter’s Cemetery next to her daughter Amanda and husband Bootsie.
In lieu of flowers, donations in Cindy’s memory can be made to the American Heart Association.
