MEMBER SPOTLIGHT | MARCH 2002
Sheryl Liddle:
Warm smile and intent blue gaze
bespeak a lively intelligence
By Kim Broers
Here
we sit in the very cold home of AWC's president, huddling
up to a space heater that offers at least a hint of
warmth. It's the week of Kansas City's Great Ice Storm
of 2002, and Marilyn's house has lost its power. A few
outlets still function, and that's enough for her, if
not for her rapidly-turning-blue guests. I smile at
Sheryl Liddle through frozen lips. Apparently, our interview
for this newsletter will not be rescheduled despite
the mass of downed limbs and wires that surround the
frosty abode in which we have met.
Really, Marilyn Ebersole should have been a postal carrier: Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor lack of heat, will stay this intrepid woman from the obligations of schedule and hospitality. She's got a coffee pot on and a skillet plugged in, and she's making French toast while Sheryl and I make small talk. We speak, naturally, of the ice crystals bedecking the world outside with a dazzling diamond display. "Deadly beauty," Sheryl calls it. Cups of fruit and a plate of pecan tarts distract me from my shivering. Briefly. "Here we go!" Marilyn says cheerfully, dishing up our breakfast.
Everyone knows Marilyn, and surely everyone in AWC knows Sheryl. She moved back to Kansas City from the East in 1995, and soon was active in the chapter, serving as president in 1999-2000. "She is a tireless volunteer for the organization," Marilyn attests.
Sheryl grew up in this area, on 40 Highway next to her grandfather's dairy farm. It was rural in those days, all countryside and woods, and she walked to school past Stephenson's orchard. Today, she lives just a quarter mile from Stephenson's, having purchased a home a year ago that had belonged to her aunt and uncle.
After high school, Sheryl attended
the extension campus of Central Missouri State in Independence,
then went on to Bob Jones University in South Carolina,
to major in cinema. Yes, THAT Bob Jones University.
Sheryl appears accustomed to the fixed stares that accompany
mention of her alma mater, and she is quick to note
two things: She is not a typical Bob Jones graduate;
and the school has a topnotch film department. After
graduation, she traveled for two years with a drama
and music group, serving as sound technician
Sheryl is what one might term
a "slide specialist," an expert at putting
together slide shows. It's somewhat of a dying art,
to Sheryl's mind, what with the fast pace of technological
advances. "Video has made everyone think they're
cinematographers," she opines. But a proficient
mix of video and slides, ah, "if it's done right
it leaves people breathless."
With her niche within the audiovisual field being overtaken by technological change, Sheryl took a job at Ruskin Manufacturing upon her return to her home-town roots. At the Grandview manufacturer of dampers and louvers, Sheryl coordinates special projects within the marketing department. To feed her creative side, she designs slide shows for the concerts of a friend who is a pianist.
It's a long way to Grandview from her home, but as Marilyn notes, "Miles don't mean anything to Sheryl." She drives all over the metro area, for work, recreation and church activities.
"I like to travel when I get the opportunity."
Sheryl worked a number of years for a mission agency that was based in New Jersey, helping advance the work of missionaries through slide presentations. That job led to her first out-of-the-country adventure, when she spent three weeks in 1988 taking slides in Gambia, Togo and Kenya.
It was hardly a tourist's dream, what with rugged country, the vicissitudes of a prop plane and a culture vastly different from that of the United States. Sheryl loved it.
She loved it so much, in fact, that she departed for Bangladesh in '92, this time spending two months in Thailand, Hong Kong, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Japan and the United Arab Emirates, where her brother, a doctor, has worked for more than 25 years.
With vacations like that, the perils of an historic ice storm must pale by comparison. Indeed, Sheryl's chief challenge during the power outage was transporting her cat to her parents' house, knowing that her father is not exactly a fancier of felines.
What, apart from traveling in unlikely locales, does Sheryl do for fun, you ask? For years, she's played tennis twice a week, and in the warmer months adds softball to her activity list. She also loves to take a day with the camera and go out shooting.
"Did I tell you I like to watch movies?" A visual person, Sheryl prefers movies to books; her film background has her focused on the multiple facets of the movie, and she enjoys observing what a director does with character development.
For Sheryl, as for the rest of us, it's all about how one views the world. She seems to take it in with a serenity that is soul-deep.
# # #
Postscript: As I leave Marilyn's house, men in cherry-pickers are clearing out limbs from tall trees along the street. I maneuver around them and head for home, thinking longingly of warmth. When I arrive, I find a tree limb has fallen on the power line, knocking it to the ground. I am without heat, without even the power to make French toast. Ah well, the trees outside my window have never looked more lovely.