Her Struggle (and Success) Deserves to be Known

WARNING: This post will contain descriptions of violence and sexual assault. It is the truth as I remember it. If you don't like that, don't read it. I'm writing this because my cousin Sherry was killed last week in a murder-suicide in her home in Cedar Rapids Iowa. You can read the article in the main newspaper for that city here.

I hadn't seen or heard from Sherry since 1989 after one of my visits home from college. As you can see in this obituary for her, her life was unknown to many of us who grew up with her. But I knew more. I want to tell you what happened during that visit, the history of her life as I knew it to that point, because sadly she had been conditioned to accept less than she was worth in life. That wasn't right. The truth deserves to be known, because maybe, just maybe, it will make someone out there realize that what happens today to their children will impact those children's entire life.

Therapy Dogs Group; Sherry second human from left

As readers of this blog know, I'm a survivor of childhood abuse. As horrible as that was, it was a bright sunny life compared to my cousin Sherry's. I wish I had more photos to share than I do, but I remember reading a book about Liza Minnelli as a child, a kid's picture book, and looking at my cousin Sherry and telling her, "You look like her." Sherry had pale skin, dark eyes, and black hair that she always wore short. She also wore glasses, which I thought hid those beautiful eyes, so I'm at least pleased to see that in her adult years she stopped wearing glasses. I tried to find out more about her life. She worked in the public and community school system in Cedar Rapids. I found the above photo of her and a group of people who worked with therapy dogs: Sherry is the second person from the left. A local TV station in Cedar Rapids had this report that mentions her work and the aftermath of her death.

A high school classmate of Sherry's contacted me privately to let me know about a fund that is currently being raised to help support Sherry's work with therapy dogs at the school where she worked for many years. If you'd like to help, please make checks out to Prairie Hill PTO then mail them to:
Prairie Hill Elementary
Attn: Scott Schipper
401 76th Ave SW
Cedar Rapids, IA 52404

Sherry became a very valued member of the school system she served. This is from the Prairie Hill Elementary School where she worked: During the week of March 2-6 we would like to take the time to honor the life of our friend Sherry through the giving of random acts of kindness. We believe that even through hurting it is important to spread joy and make a positive impact on our community, family, and friends. Each student will be bringing home a small card to pass along when they do a random act of kindness. Take a picture of it, or write a short story describing it, or both and submit them to us. We will be turning them into a collective display, or book, or both in the coming weeks.

But let's go back to my first memories of Sherry and what I knew about her life before she left home, left town, and left our family in 1989.

Sherry lived with her grandmother, my aunt Maureen, and her brother, Jeff, from the time she was at least three until she left home soon after high school graduation. I don't have the legal records, but I recall being told that Aunt Maureen got custody of them because their mother, Maureen's daughter, had abandoned them after years of an abusive marriage, and Aunt Maureen was worried about them being the two youngest kids in that house. They might have been better off in foster care or with another family member.

My aunt Maureen was a nasty piece of work.  Prior to Sherry and Jeff she had two adopted children: a son she claimed could do no wrong who later committed suicide, and a daughter she claimed was a liar and could do nothing right, which sounds exactly like what she said about Sherry and Jeff. Her sexism is astonishing to me today, and I have to wonder how many male abusers are raised in an environment where they feel free to do whatever they want – and how many female survivors are raised in an environment where they feel as if they can do nothing right.

Jeff raped Sherry. Not once, not twice, but over the course of her entire life. She'd tell me about it, but she rebuffed my attempts to get her to at least go to the school counselor. Any words anyone said against her grandmother brought out fear and anger; our last discussion was an argument, because I was urging her to tell the authorities and get away from that woman. I ended our argument by telling her that when she wanted help, she knew where to find me. I've been wracked by guilt this week, thinking that I should have called the police, should have grabbed her and made her tell someone. I couldn't even do that to protect myself; I wasn't yet conscious enough of my own power, let alone trained in any way to really help another survivor.

I witnessed a sexual assault when I was visiting my aunt Maureen's home in the early 1970s. I was four, Sherry would have been three, and Jeff was seven or eight. We were playing a game in another room while my mother and her sister (Maureen) visited in the kitchen. Jeff scooted over, grabbed at me, and tried to put his hands down my pants. I punched him. While I hadn't been able to protect myself from the adult man who had previously molested me a few times, I was big enough to defend myself against Jeff. I remember him looking at me with confusion and then just scooting over to his sister and shoving her skirt up and putting his hands under her panties; she was crying but didn't fight back. I ran into the kitchen and told my mom and Aunt Maureen, who came back into the other room, where now the other two kids were sitting apart, Sherry with tears in her eyes and Jeff with that perpetually confused and vacant look he always had. My mother grabbed me while my aunt Maureen was yelling that I was lying, that Sherry was lying, that Sherry always lied, and how poor Jeff was an angel.

My mother never took me back to that house when I was a child, and I have no more memories of my cousins until I am in the 9th grade and Sherry showed up in the 8th grade in one of my classes. My mother did that often – she'd simply remove me from a dangerous or abusive situation, and we'd never talk about it again.

Suddenly my aunt Maureen's health took a turn for the worse, so my mother was driving her to doctor's appointments, and we were spending more time with them again. Sherry and I were in junior high school, and Jeff was in high school by that time. Aunt Maureen was always saying that Jeff should date me, an idea that spread to other female family members ... CREEPY! The house they lived in seemed like a normal house except for Sherry's and Jeff's bedrooms. To get to Sherry's bedroom you had to go through his – or, put another way, the only way for Sherry to get out of her room was through Jeff's ... who sets up a house like that? Was that how her mother's bedroom had been set up? Did this same thing happen to her mother? A cousin recently told me that she heard through the family that Aunt Maureen moved Sherry into her bedroom and put a lock on her door later in Sherry's teen years but I never heard or saw that.

Old Timey Photo of Clique taken 1986 or 1986

Aunt Maureen always made Jeff accompany Sherry when she and I wanted to hang out just the two of us, but somehow, sometimes, we got her away. She joined my clique of friends by the time we got to high school; it got her away from that house for a while, and she got to see what other boys were like. Our clique was for the artistic geeks, you could say, focused on a core group of students in the same year; neither Sherry nor I were part of that core group, but we were part of the basic members; we stayed until the core group graduated in 1987.

Date or Friend? Prom 1988

Some new people came and went into our clique as new boyfriends and girlfriends entered the lives of the basic members. One of Sherry's high school classmates sent me this photo of her with one a young man at the prom in 1988... I don't recall him so he might not have interacted with our clique very much. During my senior and her junior year the core members were gone so we were moving into different groups of friends, a necessary thing to do given that we were not going to graduate the same year. Anyone know more about this uniformed guy named Tom?

Sherry & Boyfriend Summer 1986?

Getting away from her brother meant that Sherry could see new ways for boys and girls to interact. Okay, sure, we could be super goofy in our clique, but she also had boyfriends, including this dude, whom I later dated myself. Oddly that didn't cause a rift between us; dating among members of the clique was about as common as bringing in new girlfriends and boyfriends. Dating was more of a group dynamic, often with one-on-one dates afterward. We circulated between different houses -- some of us lived on farms, others in town, and once members of the clique could drive, we'd go to everyone's house. Going to Sherry's was very rare and very uncomfortable, because once more her brother had to be included. It was just easier to have her over to another person's house than deal with the atmosphere there. I never talked with the other clique members ... did they know what was happening? Did they sense the unease that both Sherry and I felt there?

It was difficult to talk with Sherry, even when I saw Jeff touching her inappropriately. I always spoke up and stopped him, I often sat between them in the back of the pickup, and he knew better than to touch me. But by then we all knew that telling the adults in our family would accomplish nothing. As I said above, she rejected any of my attempts to get her to tell a school official or even our minister, sometimes with a lot of angry words on both sides. Maybe she was told so many horror stories about her abusive father – and they are quite frightening – that she thought she had it good? She did tell me that she hated to be with Jeff because he came into her bedroom and touched her, made her do things.

A few years after I was far enough from Iowa to start dealing with my own childhood, I remembered the above incident with the game and the assault. I asked my mother about it, and she confirmed it. She told me more as well, like how her sisters and brothers had a family meeting about the abuse in that house. She told me, and my father later confirmed it, that she and Dad offered to take in Sherry, but that Aunt Maureen convinced them to let her deal with it, claimed she didn't know. Nothing changed in that house.

Sherry Senior Photo

After our argument about her reporting her grandmother and getting out of that house, I never heard from or saw her again. I did hear and see a few things about her within the greater family over the years. One of my sisters responded to a call from Sherry and helped her move out and find an apartment right after she graduated from High School. I met her first husband once at a family gathering – she'd left him and their kids; their two daughters are still alive. After her death, I learned that she kept in touch with her daughters and they seemed to have had a good relationship; I'm very glad to learn that but I won't share their names with you because I never met them beyond that one time. I don't know how many husbands Sherry had over the years, but she does not seem to have had more children. Considering the role models she had and how she was raised, I'm amazed that she had what seems to have been a relatively stable life in Cedar Rapids for many years. But she always tried to be so very friendly and helpful out in public. Maybe, like me, she felt she could help others, even if she couldn't help herself.

As for Aunt Maureen? She died while I lived in NYC, sometime between 1995-97. I baked a cake and we had a party to celebrate her death. This paralleled the Easy Bake Oven cake I'd made at age 8 when my sister, who had been married to my first abuser, filed for divorce from him.

And Jeff? I once picked him up and shoved him against a wall at the local bowling alley when I found out that he was harassing my eldest niece (at least eight years younger than him) over the phone and in person around town, and even showing up at her school.  I told him that if I heard that he'd even looked at her again, I'd kill him. I learned later that he was found guilty of child molestation at least twice – after his first jail sentence, he did it again and was arrested again. I believe he is in jail for life now; if not, he should be.

Through all of this, Sherry managed to get decent grades in school, make friends, and do activities such as band, chorus, and bowling. So I want to ask folks with good memories to leave comments here after I share some more photos with Sherry in them.

Sherry was active in band, where she played French horn. I hope she continued to play some instrument as an adult. She always went to state musical competitions. In the photo to the right she's the first person on the lower right. I remember that sweater with the fruit slices.

Band was great, not just for music, but also to make friends. You got to take trips to various competitions, and you'd share lesson time with others, so you could get to know each other if you wanted to. Sherry is in the center of this photo in the second row.

Sherry was active in chorus as well. In addition to our high school chorus there were several smaller ensembles – mixed, mixed à capella, and girls' chorus. Chorus wasn't as active as band in terms of travelling around, but you'd spend a few hours a week and do a handful of shows each year for the school and by extension our little town. Sherry is the second from the right in the first row.

Her love of and ability with music went outside high school as well. I remember being part of a quartet – two boys and the two of us – in our church that sang for services a few times. We did pop songs that could be spun as Christian. We were also in the church youth group together. I wish I had photos of those times together. But one of her friends sent me a copy of a photo of Sherry singing at their senior prom in 1989; she also sang with a group of girls as well as this solo I'm told. Prom is one of those "school" events that you don't have to do so I wanted to include this photo to show more of her individual talent.

Sherry bowled as well; she was a better bowler than I. This was an activity our clique did often; I wish I had photos of us all bowling, but these newspaper clippings will have to do. In this image we see the top bowlers, boys and girls, from the various grades. Sherry is the second from the left in the second row.

Here's a photo of my junior prom that included Sherry. In the first one, she must have been dating a junior or senior, or maybe she was part of the pre-dinner serving team.  I hope someone remembers and leaves a comment to clarify. Aunt Maureen made her dresses; my mother made mine.

I loved my dress color so much, and we were always looking to save money, so for my senior prom, my mother just changed the details of my previous year's dress, while Sherry sported a new design and color. Which do you like better -- white with red or this blue one? I like them both on her.

Some of her friends from high school have sent me other photos since this post went live on Friday, March 6, 2015. I wanted to add in some of their images of her with her friends. The most common private comment I've received from these old friends were that my memories have answered questions for them and that they, too, lost touch. I think it is only fair to show Sherry with the people who did care for her over those years in Vinton. Like your high school days, I'm sure, the last day was one of mischief and lots of photos. Here we see Sherry (back with her arm around a teacher/secretary) and a group of others cleaning out their lockers and threatening to throw away textbooks.

Here we have her with a group of girl friends some of whom I know were in my grade. I love how happy she seems here. Yes, it was the 1980s... check out some of the puffy hair styles.

Please, please share some fond memories of Sherry in the comments.