While debating as to which story to share first on this tribute site I kept coming back to this following.  It has a sad beginning with a happy ending.  I wasn’t sure if it was time to share the sad part, but without the sad, the happy never happens.  So here it is…

     I was still in elementary school at Esther L. Walker School in Anaheim.  That school went through 6th grade, so I cannot say exactly how old I was, but 11 or under, probably between 8 and 10.  Sherrie was 11 years older than I so she would have been around 20 +/-.  Our home was on Mac Murray St., in unincorporated Anaheim at the north-west corner of Magnolia and Katella.  It was a short walk from school to home.  Mom worked full-time for Hunt Wesson Foods making me a sort of “latch key” kid I suppose.  I would check in with a neighbor lady and then play with my friends until mom got home.  Once she was home I had to stay close by for the dinner call, usually about the time my dad got home from his work at around 6:15ish.  It was a good childhood in a safe neighborhood with lots of friends.   

     This particular day I was approaching my house after school to drop off my stuff.  As I was walking up the driveway the neighbor lady across the street called to me and came over.  She had probably been waiting for me.  She lived in the house directly across the street to the left, the one on the corner of Mac Murray and Regal.  The Brands and my future friend Craig would later occupy that house but I don’t recall the name of this Samaritan.  Sherrie drove a dark green Chevy Impala and on this day it was parked in front of our house on the street.  The lady told me that Sherrie had pulled up and parked the car.  She said that while getting out of the car she staggered about.  Whether the neighbor was outside or saw from inside the house I don’t remember but seeing that Sherrie was in distress she came and helped her into the house and onto our couch, where she left her. 

     Perhaps the neighbor thought Sherrie was sick.  Or perhaps she suspected the truth.  Perhaps she was trying to protect a child from reality, to brace him for what was to come.  These are adult matters.  But there I was a child walking into the unknown only knowing that something was wrong with my sissy.  I found her asleep on the couch, not appreciating the difference between sleeping and passing out.  But it was the vision of what was on the coffee table that would stick with me to this very day.  There was a brown lunch sack just sitting there.  I peered down into it.  I saw perhaps an inch of colored pills.  I had no idea what they were but I knew they were bad.  This was the beginning of the slide that took Sherrie deep into the dark side of addiction, the slide that would take her away from her home, a slide that defined her relationship with our parents for some years to come, a slide that I would mostly be protected from, by not only my parents, but by Sherrie herself. 

     Time-lines and locations become garbled in my memory.  Sherrie moved out.  I remember spending a lot of after-school time with Sherrie in the early to mid 70’s in Anaheim, Garden Grove.  I don’t remember her addiction.  She didn’t let me see her angst, her pain.  When we were together it was hidden.  We just loved each other and enjoyed our time together.  While I was being a kid Sherrie’s life was in overdrive.  The pill incident was around 1968-70.  By 1975 Sherrie would marry and divorce Art Buchanan, marry Murphy Eakins, live in 3 homes I know of, find God, and give birth to her only son, my only nephew, Nathan, on Christmas day 1975.  She and Murphy found God together, found sobriety together, and even started a church together in Anaheim.  Sherrie later said that it was Jesus Christ alone that gave her the strength to quit the drugs once and for all, cold turkey, and without withdrawals. 

     And this brings us to 1976/77.  I was now 16 years of age.  I don’t remember the circumstances as to why I was there.  But Sherrie had taken me to this mega church, Melodyland, just east of Disneyland.  It was in a large theater in the round, now long gone replaced by The Garden Walk and a parking structure.  My church history up to then was sparse.  My parents were never big church goers, at least not in my lifetime.  I went more often with my grandparents to their Baptist church, first in Orange County and later in Santa Rosa.  To a kid sitting in the pews it was just boring.  I didn’t know anyone there to feel comfortable going to Sunday school, so I just sat next to grandma and grandpa, daydreaming and squirming.  This was church to me.  Nice people.  Dressed well.  Peaceful.  Boring.

     On that day in Melodyland I don’t remember the message or the pastor and I don’t know if I ever went there again, but when the pastor made the traditional call to the altar, I got up and walked down and gave my life to Christ.  I didn’t know what that really meant and I’m still learning.  But it was the start.  And it was Sherrie that got me there. 

     And that’s why her story of woe and salvation is so important to me.  I became a Christian because of Sherrie’s life.  I became a chiropractor because of my wife (that’s another story) but chiropractic fit me so well because of that little bag of pills.  While my friends and schoolmates indulged in pot, alcohol, and other drugs, I was never tempted.  I had already seen what those things can do.  I extended that attitude to include legal drugs, medicines.  While medicine may be necessary, devoting my life to helping people find health without medicine felt right. 

     And of course, like the proverbial ripples in the water, my decisions, influenced by Sherrie’s decisions, have changed the lives of my wife, my children, and thousands of patients over the years.  I can thank God for Sherrie, and perhaps I can thank Sherrie for God, at least for a good introduction.  And one final point of this story, I believe and have written elsewhere that the best way to honor a life is not to mourn that lost life or to celebrate that life lived.  Those are honorable and necessary steps to fill the crater of grief.  But to truly honor that life we should earnestly try to apply some of the life-lessons learned by the departed to our own life, and to publicly acknowledge the role he or she is still playing in our lives.  So this I have done and this I will continue to do.