Lorraine M. McSherry Age 89, of Walton KY, formerly of St. Paul, MN, and Cary, IL, Lorraine passed away peacefully on April 4, 2020, after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Preceded in death by husbands, Chuck Wagner and John L. McSherry, and sister, Frannie Raas. Survived by her children, Linda Gray (Steve); Connie Haynes (Tom); Terri Smith (Bruce); Kate McSherry, JohnMcSherry (Susan); Amy McSherry; 11 grandchildren; 7 great-grandchildren; brother Don Hofschulte (Diann); best friend for life, Bev Kaufenberg; and caregiver Cheri Rolfes.
Mom was tenacious, funny, beautiful, and smart, but mostly, she was brave. If you had asked her what her most notable accomplishments were, she would probably have said her children and her marriage. If you asked us, we’d say her ability to survive and thrive through it all. She was a caregiver to her mother and her husbands through their illnesses, until their deaths. When she was widowed in her twenties with three small children, she not only got on with life, she created a new one. She remarried, had three more children, and loved her role as a homemaker and mother, making mundane tasks seem like an adventure.
Picking green beans! Scrubbing pickles! She taught us homemade was the best. Mom was also a consummate list maker. No project was too overwhelming, if you just made a list and checked each item off. She was self-taught in so many things. Not only was she an accomplished gardener, she was the treasurer for the garden club; she loved to fish and could not only catch a basket of blue gills, but fillet and fry them, too. Being an expert seamstress, it seemed she was capable of making anything. The Halloween costumes she created were masterpieces, passed down for years, evidenced by the multiple snapshots of her six children modeling them. She took up watercolor painting later in life, and specimens from her garden became her subject matter. Mom loved creating things in an exquisite way and was really good at it. She faced her Alzheimer’s diagnosis with grace and courage–the way she taught all of her children to handle whatever life delivers.