Naomi Jungling Sica, pianist, organist, and artist, was born in Lodi, California, of German parents born in Russia; both came to America as children, their parents settling as homesteaders in North Dakota. They didn’t have the opportunity for much schooling, especially music study, and made sure their children did. Sica attributes her interest in a career in music to the encouragement of Christian teachers in Seventh-day Adventist schools. She graduated from Lodi Academy in 1954. Her piano teachers at LA were Ruth Lust, from Argentina, and Yvonne Caro Howard, from New Zealand. Howard took Naomi to her first concert at the Lodi High School to hear pianist Leonard Pennario.

Jungling studied music and art at Pacific Union College, receiving a B.S. in music education in 1958. Her piano teachers at PUC were Lois Stauffer; Gilmour McDonald, a student of Leopold Godowsky; and Howard, who joined the PUC staff in 1956 and again became Naomi’s teacher. She studied organ with Barbara Tonsberg; theory with C. Warren Becker; and conducting, orchestration, and brass methods with Melvin Hill. Art was a minor area in both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. She studied with the noted SDA artist Vernon Nye at PUC.

From 1958-1968 Jungling taught piano, art, theory and music appreciation at Monterey Bay Academy. During her first four years at MBA she taught with Robert Murray. She was keyboardist (piano, harpsichord or organ, as needed) with the Santa Cruz Symphony in the 1960s. For a time she studied piano with Jesusa Fremont, a student of Alfred Cortot, and accompanied a string trio and a choral group in the community.

Jungling completed an M.A. in music and music education at San Jose State College (now University) in 1965. At SJS she studied piano with William Erlendson and organ with Harold Jesson. In Berkeley, California, she studied piano both with Harald Logan, a student in Berlin of Egon Petri who had studied with world famous composer and pianist Ferruccio Busoni; and with Egon Petri. It was during this time that she learned of the Robert Pace method of teaching piano in groups, took his workshops in the San Francisco Bay area and New York City, and began testing his new ideas.

From 1968-1979 Jungling taught at Union College, with her teacher from PUC days, Melvin Hill, chair of the department of music; and Robert Murray, a colleague from MBA days. She taught piano, sight-singing and ear training, music fundamentals, and piano pedagogy. She also accompanied various choral groups, and played the violin in the college orchestra. She continued study in the summers and received a Professional Diploma, a degree half way toward a doctorate, at Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1970.

In 1980, Jungling completed an Ed. D. in music and music education at TCCU. Her dissertation, The Development of the Solo Piano Suite Through the 20^th Century, is a two-volume work of over 500 pages. She studied piano in New York with Santos Ojeda, of Cuba and the first foreign-born student to be accepted into the Juilliard School of Music; Martin Canin and Howard Aibel, students of and assistants to Rosina Lhevinne, of the Juilliard School of Music; and harpsichord with Eugenia Earle.

While studying in NY, Jungling met Philip T. Sica, a warrant officer in the NYC Department of Finance. Earlier he had served as a county detective in the Queens District Attorney’s office, and was appointed Marshal of NYC, an 8-year term, by Mayor John Lindsay. Sica had just become an Adventist a week before he and Naomi met.

He had a keen interest in religion and took the ADP course (adult degree program) at Atlantic Union College, majoring in religion. Upon his graduation in 1980, he was hired by the Greater New York Conference as pastor, Director of Trust Services and Corporate Secretary. They married in September 1982. For nearly four years he worked as the New York City and Long Island Representative for the Christian Braille Association, servicing the blind and deaf, then returned to work at the GNYC once again.

It was the dream of Merlin Kretschmar, President of the GNYC during those years, to have a Seventh-day Adventist Information Center in Manhattan. He asked Naomi to run this pilot program in late 1982 and she accepted, managing it for nearly 14 years. The SDAIC, located adjacent to the Adventist Book Center on 40^th Street, just off of Fifth Avenue and across from the New York Public Library, proved to be a highly successful outreach program for the church. It was a pilot program and was a way for people of varying religious backgrounds to learn about Adventism. Several became Adventists.

In 1996, the Sicas were sent upstate to Livingston, New York, to work at the Adventist Retirement Center, Philip as pastor of two churches and a member of the boards for two schools as well as the retirement and nursing homes, and Naomi as chaplain of both homes. During their two years there, she continued as organist and choir director at the Trinity Lutheran Church in New Hyde Park, a position she had started in early 1994 and, since her retirement in 1998, still holds. Before that she had been organist at the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Rockville Centre; the Queens Baptist Church in Queens Village; and two other Lutheran churches.

Since his retirement from the GNYC, Philip has become the President of the Queens Village Republican Club, oldest Republican Club in the nation (1875) and Commander of the American Legion Post 301, and has run for several political offices. He is also a realtor and mortgage banker.

Naomi often plays for Adventist churches in the NYC area and alternates on a regular basis with others as organist at the Jackson Heights SDA Church in Queens. She has been guest organist and pianist at several area churches of different denominations and regularly serves as organist for seasonal presentations such as Handel’s Messiah. Beginning in 1983 and through the rest of that decade, she accompanied the Merrick Chorale, Richard Gilley, Director, on Long Island. She enjoys attending the open rehearsals of the NY Philharmonic Orchestra at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in her spare time.

2007