Cindy turns 68, and she’s not retiring—not yet, thank goodness
There’s something about birthdays that can make you philosophical, looking back on your life with the benefit of hindsight and asking yourself if you made the right decisions.
Our co-founder, office manager and nurse Cindy (nee South) Allen turns 68 today. She’s coming off the most difficult period of her career—the pandemic and all the seismic changes in health care it created or made more challenging. But she has not a flicker of regret.
“I’ve always been happy that this is what I’ve chosen,” she says. “I know I’ve made a difference in people’s lives. I’ve been so happy to be a part of the lives of four generations in Muncie.”
Cindy came by her interest in health care honestly, with four nurse aunts she grew up idolizing. Raised on a farm in Bainbridge, Indiana, young Cindy helped her dad with the cattle and pigs and went with her mom to the library and band practice—the best of two worlds, she says. “It was a wonderful childhood.”
When it came time for college, she chased her little-girl dream, studying nursing at Indiana University. There she would also meet her future husband, Steve Allen, who was in medical school. While he served his residency in Muncie and finished up his training, she would graduate, then work in the kidney transplant unit at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis and as a dialysis nurse and intensive care nurse at Ball Hospital.
Then, putting down roots and starting their family in Muncie, they decided they wanted to grow something else as well—their own medical practice.
Internists Associated opened in 1981, starting small with just a couple doctors. “We both worked super hard,” says Cindy—but the work was for themselves, making it a joy to watch their new enterprise grow alongside their two children.
Today IA boasts four doctors, two nurse practitioners and a staff of 25, still in the original building on Royale Drive, though you might not recognize it after an outside facelift this summer.
The Allens’ son, Drew, is a software engineer, and their daughter, Megan Zelasko, is a doctor in the practice poised to take over some day. She has two young daughters who are, of course, the apple of their grandmother’s eye—and one inspiration to start cutting back her work hours.
Cindy recently started working part time at the IA office, wintering three months a year in Mexico. She loves spending time with her granddaughters, of course, and is a voracious reader.
Call it a new phase of life or some well-deserved respite. COVID-19 was hard in countless ways, not least of all the work hours it required. The health care industry would be unrecognizable to the Cindy just graduating from IU, with insurance a perennial problem to solve. But time has given her more perspective, she says, and worn some of the edges off her formerly perfectionist self.
“I just don’t get upset about the little things anymore,” she says. “I’ve been able to really enjoy my life without putting so much pressure on myself.
“I want to be happy every day.”
For making so many others happy as well, we thank Cindy for all her years of service and wish her a happy birthday—and many, many more.