By Courtney Hong
Staff Writer
The business card reads: Deborah S. Armstrong, financial assistance advisor, but there is obviously much more to this warm, motherly woman with a twinkle in her eyes than that.
“She has so many sides to her, people don’t even know,” says senior student worker Ashley Bellamar-Miller readily.”She’s kind of like another mom, always here for you, always here to listen. She’s religious on the one hand, very professional on the other, compassionate. She’s an awesome person. She’s had black hair before. She dyes her hair blonde! She used to look like Elvira.” Bellamar-Miller pauses before clarifying:”She used to dress up like her for Halloween.”
The story of the black hair can be found in Armstrong’s Hispanic maiden name, Martinez, which she was hesitant to let go upon marrying her husband of nearly 25 years, Brett.”I seriously thought about hyphenating,” explains Armstrong.”I thought about my children… Martinez-Armstrong. No way could I do that to them.”
The formerly black hair, too, comes with an explanation.”I grew up with black hair,” says Armstrong matter-of-factly, who dyes her own hair.”I’ve been gray since I was eleven. I really grew gray in my late 20s. By my mid 30s, I finally got convinced to dye my hair. Someone at church said, ‘See that woman with the gray hair?’ I didn’t want to be known as the woman with the gray hair.”
Armstrong suddenly reaches to the floor for her purse, unfazed by the direction that the conversation might be heading in her cozy office. She rummages through it, procuring a wallet, opening it, taking out one driver’s license to reveal another.”Here,” she says, almost proudly holding it out. The photo of the pitch-black, gray-streaked haired woman looks years younger than the dirty blonde, gray-streaked haired 44-year-old one smiling on her office chair. Armstrong laughs as she nonchalantly slips her most recent license on top of the one she just showed off.
Her desk, neatly organized, is evidence that Armstrong, former office receptionist, has settled into her new role of financial assistance advisor, which keeps her at the office on weekdays from 8-5 p.m.”I really enjoy my day here,” says Armstrong.”I like being with the students, my co-workers. Being here’s easy for me. I’m not opposed to going home, though. I like going home.”
Home is a Spanish-style house in Thousand Oaks, where sounds of the television, Brett cooking in the kitchen, and perhaps Armstrong’s daughter, Gabrielle, a senior in high school, on the phone, may waft through the air.
“My husband does all the cooking, I do all the cleaning,” says Armstrong.”It’s by choice,” she adds.” He loves to cook. Now, can I cook? Yes, I’m a pretty good cook. Do I like to cook? Nah, not really.”
Dinner is a family affair, most of the time. Armstrong gathers around the coffee table, in front of the television, with Brett, Gabrielle, and her two sons, Chris, 23, and Stephen, 22, if they are home.
Armstrong admits to sometimes having more quality conversations with her students during a workday than at home, where she is, in the end, still”mom.” She sees her most important roles as that of he relationship with God, then being a wife and partner, a mother, and an employee. She describes herself as spiritual, loyal, with a servant’s heart.
“The new kids would never know that,” Armstrong says, referring to the most recent student workers that the office hired, whom she is unable to get to know better more quickly because she’s no longer at the front desk.”A few of them are afraid of me,” she adds.”When they all came in, they asked me a lot of questions. I was analyzing everything going on, I was on overload. I feel like I’m smiling again. The kids out there still have to learn who I am. That will come.”
Armstrong is a woman who embraces life and who she is.”I love my age. I’m actually looking forward to my fifties,” she says convincingly.”By then, hopefully, we’ll be debt-free. With every year comes spiritual wisdom. I don’t like my body growing older, but I don’t mind my mind growing older.”
This awareness of physical health was a lesson learned when her father passed away recently from diabetes, shortly after his legs were amputated.”You’re definitely sad,” Armstrong says quietly.”You’ve lost a vital part of who you are. In the Lord, you know you’ll see them again, but it made me take a real good look at the physical part of me. My dad died of diabetes horribly. Here’s this incredible spiritual man and he didn’t take the doctors seriously. If I make these changes now, the idea is to preserve my physical body to continue the spiritual ministry that God has for me.”
At the end of the day, Armstrong goes back to her faith in Jesus Christ.”Every day is a new day,” she remarks.”I’m not afraid of tomorrow. When you make a statement like that, someone gets hit by a bus, but I’m prepared if someone is, because I’ve been through it enough times. It’s the awesome reality that God can get me through anything.”
05-26-2005
