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Cheryl Dowden-Parrott Celebration of Life
September 5 @ 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm
A celebration of remembrance for our dear friend Cheryl will be live streamed on YouTube on Saturday, September 5, at 1:00 p.m. Please follow the this link: https://embeds.sermoncloud.com/grace-umc-claremore-ok/live?theme=dark
Or this link: https://www.youtube.com/@ClaremoreGraceUMC/streams
Cheryl Dowden-Parrott, of Douglassville, Pennsylvania, died July 20, 2026, at the age of 79. She was born September 5, 1946, in Maryville, Missouri, the daughter of Delbert and Opal Dowden.
She was told as a young woman that she would never teach because of a speech impediment. She taught anyway, for over forty years. Almost all of that career was in special education, in Afton and Osceola, Iowa, and later in Claremore, Oklahoma. She also taught for a time in Australia, a country she loved and said more than once she probably would have stayed in if she hadn’t met her husband, Dean. She was not a gentle teacher, but she was relentless, and she would take on anyone who stood in a student’s way. She was opinionated and strong willed and untroubled by anyone knowing it, and she had a saying for most occasions, though only some of them were printable.
She met her future husband, Dean, at the school where she taught and he worked. She came home from Australia for him and never suggested it had been a sacrifice. They were married almost 49 years, and she spent those decades backing him, through job changes and eventually through a college degree. They built a life together in Iowa, then Oklahoma, and finally Pennsylvania. She loved him fiercely and argued with him freely, and anyone who knew them understood that the two were not in conflict. She never softened, for him or for anyone. She simply chose him, every day, for all of it.
Cheryl did not believe family was a matter of blood. She believed it was a matter of choosing, and she chose often. Over the years a steady stream of her students came to stay at the house, some for a few days and some for far longer. Two of the people she took in, Randy and Rod, she and Dean adopted as their sons. The animals arrived the same way. The house was rarely without a cat or a dog that had been rescued or abandoned by someone else, and Dean was generally informed of a new pet rather than consulted about one.
She was preceded in death by her parents and by her son Rod. She is survived by her husband, Dean; her sons Bryan and Randy; her sisters, Debby Dowden and Barbara Pettlon, both of Maryville, Missouri; and seven grandchildren.