Deborah Erickson passed on surrounded by her loving husband and children. For everyone who knows Deborah, this passing has come as a blow that won’t soon be recovered from. We, her family, have collaborated on writing a few (many) words about the Mother, Wife, and Sister we all adore. Though someone like her can not be easily summarized - here is our attempt at a biographical tribute to our beloved Deborah.

Early Life

Born in Rochester, New York on August 30th 1953, Deborah was the first of three girls born to Sam Boyko and Virginia Blanchard. She was the eldest sister to Rebecca and Christina.

Deborah was a precocious child with boundless energy. In family videos Debbie bounced around the frame: vibrating with excitement.

Deborah was a natural leader with incredible verbal skills and storytelling abilities. If the girls were playing a game: it was one of her making. Her sisters remember her saying, “Here’s what we are going to do” before she launched into a totally original, incredibly imaginative, and always thorough description of a game she had just made up, just for them. Be it snow horses in winter or something more bespoke. For example, the infamous “CHOCOLATE FACTORY” in which she would shoot marbles across the floor at high speeds for her sisters to catch and package up in pre-cut paper satchels mimicking their favorite scene in I LOVE LUCY.

This same thoughtfulness was applied to the home library. Deborah created a highly detailed, instructional manual for “checking out” books including rules and regulations surrounding the treatment of the items. True to Deborah, everything had a place and every place had codified restrictions on use.

By high school, Deborah channeled this conscientious vitality to academics and extracurriculars. She performed on the cheerleading team and was a member of the National Honor Society. Deborah played the flute in the concert band and played piano for the jazz band. She was named (voted) “Class Musician” in her senior yearbook. Her best friend from High School, Debbie Harper, says she was known for her positive attitude, and is remembered by her classmates as smart and talented with a radiant smile. She was a “people person” who made friends easily and nurtured her friendships for life. COVID restrictions kept her from attending her 50th High School Reunion, but nothing could keep her from staying in touch.

Deborah’s energy and ability drove her with an inherent inertia that enabled her to accomplish incredible things both in her career and personal life.

Marriage & Children

While teaching at Northeastern State University in 1984, Deborah fatefully met, befriended and counseled a troubled itinerant optometrist teaching at NSU’s College of Optometry. Deborah was introduced by a match-minded friend to a colleague at a university function. She later reported being unimpressed with the colleague but intrigued by the “cute, sarcastic” sidekick - our optometrist Paul. The impromptu meeting led to further contacts over the following 12 months, including Paul meeting and entertaining her son Deron and Deborah meeting and endearing herself to Paul’s daughters Inger and Lara (spending the summer with Paul). Roughly two years into his teaching career, Paul announced he would leave Oklahoma to take an R&D job at Bausch & Lomb in Rochester. This geographic irony was noted by Deborah, who moved quickly to resign from NSU, enter her home town job market and invite (direct?) Paul to prepare to be married. The wedding ceremony was conducted six months later in Letchworth Park with Deron, Lara and Inger serving as attendants of the bride and groom.

To the marriage, Deborah and Paul brought their three children, subsequently collaborating on two more children, Austen and Haley. Deb cherished each of them with her whole heart as they grew - always ready to offer compassion, support and an empathetic ear. When grandchildren Emilio, Elliott, and Juliana came along, she was both eager to be and supremely capable of being the perfect Nana. Her love extended beyond her own children and grandchildren too, sharing her warmth and wisdom to her daughters-in-law, extended relatives, friends of the family (young and old), and even some randomly encountered strangers with whom she found it so easy to build affinity.

As a parent she was, in a word, devoted. She could be firm when the situation called for it, but it was always coupled with fondness and sourced from a genuine desire for what was best for her children. She prioritized them in all decisions and instances, and with all her resources she was generous beyond any expectations. Whether in helping them search for the perfect home, or listening with tenderness and giving sage advice on a late night phone call, she was always there for her family. Oftentimes the only thing that could be given in return was love, and everyone who truly knew her truly loved her.

Career

Despite her deep devotion to family and friends, Deborah’s prodigious energy and creative passion were sufficient to accommodate a prolific professional career. After completing in quick succession (6 years!) a BA (psychology and music, Houghton College), an MA (school psychology, Alfred University) and EdD (counselor education, University of Arkansas), she sharpened her skills in several counseling and mental health service settings in rural Arkansas.

Circumstances and recognition of her complementary gifts for caring and communicating convinced her to shift from client and patient interactions to sharing her knowledge and insights with students seeking education and employment in her chosen field. She secured a teaching position at Northeastern State University just over the border in Oklahoma.

A subsequent household relocation to Rochester NY led to a dizzying run of counseling, public education and tertiary education positions in Western NY, perhaps highlighted by her six happy years at Niagara University. Along the way she continued to expand her academic and professional credentials, achieving certification as a primary school teacher and school superintendent, supplementing those already obtained in counseling and psychology.

After 14 impressively productive years in Rochester, she and Paul picked up their family and moved to Sydney. She took a job in the psychology faculty at the University of Sydney where, in addition to family, teaching and research responsibilities, she acquired a PhD in psychology.

After returning to the USA and Rochester in 2002, Deborah resumed her engagement with American academic and professional psychology, conducting and publishing important research in her areas of interest and serving her professional community in several leadership and editorial roles. Her academic career culminated with her selection to be the Provost and Academic Vice President at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania. She retired from LHU in 2018.

All told, she held full time faculty positions at seven US universities and at the University of Sydney in Australia. Even more impressively, she achieved the rank of Professor at four of them. She simultaneously served as adjunct faculty at four other US universities and as a Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Her leadership abilities were routinely recognized; she led the development from scratch of graduate mental health counseling programs at three universities and the pharmacy program at St. John Fisher College. She directed counseling programs at three other universities. The apex and finale of her career saw her in consecutive executive positions as dean, associate provost and provost.

Deborah made important contributions to the scientific literature, especially in the areas of child development and education, effects of personality on treatment outcomes and communication styles. Her research works are immortalized in 40 refereed journal publications (nine co-authored with her lovely assistant Paul), and more than 50 professional presentations and invited lectures. She served on editorial boards of nine professional journals and refereed multiple manuscripts for those and several other learned publications. Deborah also advised entities from national and state governments to wayward neighbors on myriad matters within her expertise.

Later Years

Alongside her long and illustrious professional career, Deborah always had a passion for music. She sang, played the piano and flute, and even conducted the bell choir at Brighton Presbyterian, where Paul was one of her star bell-ringers. Anyone who spent an extended time on the road with her would recognize her favorite albums by John Denver, and Barbara Streisand. Anyone who lived with her would have become well accustomed to hearing "Bubbles in the Wine" and "Adios, Au Revior, Auf Wiedershen" bracketing the weekly viewing of the Lawrence Welk Show. While she had a very exclusive list of films she enjoyed watching, a seeming majority were musicals - from Shirley Temple to Disney to Rogers and Hammerstein. A happy ending was an essential inclusion.

From the tiny Allen's Creek running through the backyard at the eponymous street in Rochester, to the colossal Pacific Ocean off the east coast of Australia, one of Deborah's great joys was living beside the water. Combined with her passion for new work projects and buying and selling real estate, this led her to living in an impressive collection of waterside locations: in Kendall adjacent to a pond surrounded by dozens of trees planted by her and Paul, on the shores of Lake Ontario in a small wood-heated cinder block home, on the cliffs overlooking Lurline Bay, not one but two separate houses on Allens Creek Road, on Cowanesque Lake near Mansfield, and a log cabin beside the Susquehanna.

So, it was no surprise when on retiring, Deborah and Paul took up dual residencies at the Harbor of Rochester, and Clovelly beach in Sydney. The latter was traded in 2018 for Deborah's dream house in Wombarra, nestled between the mighty Illawarra escarpment and the ocean. Deborah found great joy sitting in the sunroom or her favorite chair in the living room, at any hour of the day or night, and watching the water and listening to the waves crash along the shore.

The Wombarra house was cozy, but large enough to host family and friends. Katrina and John often came down from Sydney to visit Deb and Paul for a few drinks and long conversations out on the balcony. So did Steve and Penny, who also recently joined them on a car camping adventure across New South Wales. Ian and Michelle always found an excuse to drive down on their visits to Australia. Austen and his wife Sarah saw Wombarra and Deb & Paul's hospitality as a frequent and welcome respite from work in the city. Deron and his wife Jen and their children, and Haley also managed to make it all the way across the pond to visit them there.

While they more often met up for lunch in Niagara, Judy made it over to Australia once too. Whenever Deborah and Paul made it back to Lock Haven, they were always generously hosted by Nancy and Ernie in the old lockhouse near the river. In Minnesota, they stayed with Dick and Brenda. Most recently, they had a chance to travel with Rick and Sylvie out to the site of the famous Ohio Research Symposium.

Among her multiple retirement interests, Deborah vigorously pursued her interests in the culinary and photographic arts. Four of her coastal nature photos were selected as Photo of the Day on a popular NSW weather show. Although her expanding repertoire of recipes had yet to achieve award status, she often noted that her “chief taster Paul ate and thanked me for everything I ever prepared.” 

Perhaps more than anything else, Deborah loved spending time together with her family. Deborah always fondly remembered Christmas and Thanksgiving growing up, when her extended family, including her aunts and uncles and cousins Linda and Karen, also joined for the holidays. Living in two hemispheres allowed Deborah to extend the holiday spirit almost year-round from Christmas-in-July through the combined Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year's "Halthanksmas" (previously and occasionally referred to as "Thanksmaween", and "Hallowthanksmas"). She obtained great practical and aesthetic efficiencies by keeping a Christmas tree up and fully decorated in both her US and Australian homes.

While it was not always possible to get the entire family together every year, Deborah was an organizational powerhouse when it came to planning family holidays down to the day (and often down to the meal). Months, and sometimes years, in advance she would begin the process of scheduling get-togethers - working tirelessly to coordinate flights, accommodation, and activities. She took the whole family to Disney World several times, and offered to continuously be the one sitting at the base of the rides monitoring any bags or children who couldn't be taken on. She was always so happy to see the rest of her family enjoying themselves; watching them brought her more joy than any theme park attraction could.

Deborah's family ultimately provided the inspiration for her final (upcoming) publication. Over the last few years she wrote a children's book - full of characters and teaching important lessons inspired by her own children. Magical Adventures: The Mischievous Huldufolk will be published in 2023.

Missed but never forgotten

Her family, her profession and the world have lost a great one. Her life enriched all those fortunate enough to know her. We love you, Deborah.

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