by Ella Young
Based on Portrait 1 & book title: Science for Modern Living
~a story about Winifred “Winnie” Cunningham-Bridges~
Brighton, U.K, 1881. Winifred “Winnie” Bridges was born to her two loving and successful parents, Elizabeth and John Bridges. Winnie spent the first ten years of her life being taught at home by her mother. Her father, John, worked as a professor at Yorkdale College teaching sociology to aspiring students. Winnie had always loved listening to her father teach her about the way humans socialized and why. After Winnie’s tenth birthday, she and her family moved to King’s Township, Ontario, Canada as her father was offered a better teaching position at Masterson Hall University. By age fifteen she had already completed the secondary school curriculum with the help of her father’s knowledge and her mother’s never slowing desire to learn. Not more than a week after her seventeenth birthday she was already submitting applications to colleges and universities. She later got accepted into Manchester Wealth University where she studied psychology alongside her roommate, Sheila Thornton. During her second year of school she met James Cunningham, the new psychology professor, who graduated two years before Winnie and Sheila started. The two soon started seeing each other after class with the help of Sheila’s scheming. Winnie and Sheila both graduated with a psychology degree and a dream of opening a clinic in their town. A year and a half later their dream came true when they bought, remodeled and opened a psychology clinic with the help of James. Winnie and Sheila partnered together and specialized in talk therapy for children. A year after their clinic opened, James proposed to Winnie and they got married twelve months later. They bought themselves a house just a short ten minute walk from the clinic. Winnie and James later had a baby girl named Elizabeth “Beth” Cunningham-Bridges, in 1909. She and James both took time off their jobs to raise her until she was old enough to attend a nearby school. When Beth was twelve, Winnie took her out of school and began teaching her at home like her mother did for her. Beth quickly met all the schooling criterias and Winnie later brought her into the clinic to start learning psychology. Winnie passed away two years after James who died at age eighty-seven. She lived a rewarding and cherished life with her husband, best friend and daughter. She’s respected by psychologists everywhere for her dedication to helping children. She was presented with a RR (Respected Researchers) psychology award by King’s Township.
This is the beginning of the extraordinary story of Winifred “Winnie” Cunningham-Bridges.