CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – Sheryl Farmer’s shopping cart had served as her grounding stability over the last few years while she dealt with mental illness and homelessness.
Known in the community as “Ms. Sheryl,” the 62-year-old woman normally stayed in the Sango area of Clarksville, and she was frequently seen at the bus stops lining Madison Street, around Marshall’s or hanging out in Arby’s for hours at a time.
With frigid weather coming, in the last week her children and those who often stopped to talk with her were pooling together some money and making arrangements to get her the help she needed.
But on Wednesday, Feb. 10, Ms. Sheryl died after she was hit by a truck on Madison Street.
Friends, family and strangers alike are remembering her for her graciousness, humor and kind spirit in the face of the challenges that dragged her life into the shadows.
“She was very well educated,” Beverly Adkins of Clarksville said. “She was very intelligent, and if you talked to her for just a little while, you could figure that out.”
Ms. Sheryl’s life
In the 1950s, Ms. Sheryl’s mother, Adelita, emigrated from Cuba to the U.S., where she would later meet Ms. Sheryl’s father, Paul Rustin. Ms. Sheryl was born May 29, 1958, in Macon, Georgia, and graduated from Central High School there. She was a mother to five children.
Elizabeth Lethers, 34, is the second youngest of them. Along with her older brother, Ashley Freeman, Lethers was making arrangements on Feb. 10 to come to Clarksville and get their mother into a hospital for mental health treatment.
After treatment, the plan was for Ms. Sheryl to then live with Freeman. Instead, on Thursday, Feb. 11, the siblings had to make their mother’s funeral arrangements.
“We grew up in Macon, Georgia. We grew up real poor,” Lethers told Clarksville Now. “My mom worked retail jobs, and raising five kids. She has mental health issues, and we ended up going into foster care when I was about 10 or 11.”
Lethers said her mother did just about everything she could to get her children back after they went to foster care, but it didn’t work out. They lost contact when Elizabeth Lethers was 13.
“I found her again when I was 19 and started emailing her. We started building our relationship,” Lethers said.
Communication from then on was touch-and-go, but it was not unusual for Ms. Sheryl to go radio silent for a year or two at a time. With her then-husband, Ms. Sheryl had been bouncing around the country to places like Colorado, California and back to Georgia, according to Lethers.
“I was trying to help her between 2016 and 2018. Her husband basically abandoned her to an extent. He would come by (their house) and bring groceries like once a month, not that many groceries,” Lethers said.
In 2017, Lethers had police officers go to Ms. Sheryl’s home to talk to her about going to a women’s shelter. However, because she wouldn’t be able to bring her belongings, Ms. Sheryl declined. The belongings meant a lot to her, and included sentimental photos and items that were once her mother’s.
Those were some of the items Ms. Sheryl kept in her shopping cart.
“Feb. 8, 2018, was the last correspondence I had with her, and then she just disappeared,” Lethers said.
Mental health challenges
Adkins was checking on Ms. Sheryl regularly. She and her sister would go sit with Ms. Sheryl, bring food, and eat together.
“She was the type of person that was very easy to love,” Adkins said.
With the colder weather coming, Adkins began looking for Ms. Sheryl’s family. Through Facebook, she reached out to one of Lethers sisters, who put her in contact with Lethers.
Ms. Sheryl opened up to Adkins and told her that several year earlier, after running some errands one day, she returned home to find that her belongings were splayed out on the front lawn, and the doors to her home were locked. Lethers thinks this was around Feb. 8, 2018, which was the last time she heard from her mother.
The children tried for the last month to get her into a hotel because of the weather, but she wouldn’t go. Ms. Sheryl told Adkins she was afraid that the husband, who abandoned her, would coming looking for her.
Others in the community were trying to get her into a hotel as well.
Scott Comperry, who runs a local Facebook group that advocates for people experiencing homelessness, said he put out an all-call for donations and had raised enough funds for Ms. Sheryl to stay at a hotel for a few weeks. He was looking for her in the week leading up to her death to help get her into the hotel.
“It was just a fluke. I normally drive down Madison Street, and I’d see her at a bus stop or somewhere, and I just wanted to get her in when this cold weather hit, and she passed before I got to her,” Comperry said.
“Oh, I cried my eyes out when I knew it was her, and I knew it was her from the picture,” Comperry added in reference to photos from the accident scene published by Clarksville Now.
In the weeks before the accident, Adkins helped Lethers and her mother get reconnected. Just one day before Ms. Sheryl’s accident, Lethers was able to see her mother online.
“I was able to FaceTime with her, and she was pretty delusional at that time. Just paranoid, and had some dementia as well. She didn’t remember that both of her parents were dead, which I didn’t end up telling her because I didn’t know how well she would take it with the state of mind she was already in,” Lethers said.
Before the mental illness became severe, Ms. Sheryl was a talented artist, Lethers said, and this is evidenced by her sketches, many of which Lethers has kept. She also loved reading, philosophy, and going all out for the holidays. Lethers remembers her decorating the house for Christmas and loving every minute of it.
Community comes together
YAIPaks community outreach, headed by Sherry Nicholson, often checked on Ms. Sheryl. They made sure she had clothing and weatherized gear to sustain herself, and members of the group would often bring food.
“She would be super sweet for really most of the time. Every now and then she would be a little feisty,” Nicholson said
That feistiness, Nicholson said, was the mental illness running its course.
“We just loved on her, we always made sure she had food. It’s kind of funny because one of the (YAIPaks) team members a week or two ago took her to Wendy’s to get her a hamburger meal, and she said, ‘Well Ms. Sheryl, go ahead and make your order,’ and she ordered $35 worth of food to take with her,” Nicholson added with a chuckle.
For YAIPaks, the timing of Ms. Sheryl’s death was heart-wrenching. The morning after she was hit, the group had plans to take a high-visibility belt to her so that when she crossed the streets, drivers would be able to see her more clearly.
Nicholson said her group had reason to be concerned. About a month earlier, Ms. Sheryl was crossing a parking lot and her shopping cart was bumped by a driver who didn’t see her. Thankfully, Nicholson’s husband was right behind that car.
“(My husband) called me immediately, and Ms. Sheryl was having one of her feisty days. The lady that bumped her cart was obviously devastated and crying and just so in shock. And of course, Ms. Sheryl was like, ‘Well honey this is your fault, you should not have hit my cart, so,'” Nicholson said.
“We hope that we can educate the community on it. (People experiencing homelessness) are humans and even though they are locked in a prison in their mind, they’re still humans and they still have family somewhere,” Nicholson added.
Comperry said several people had been trying to help Ms. Sheryl. “Through Facebook, I found out that so many more people were trying to do the same thing I was trying to do,” he said.
Adkins believes Ms. Sheryl has created a legacy of sorts.
“After the year we had last year, she really brought so many of us in the community together. We all had a mutual love of Ms. Sheryl,” Adkins said.
The memorial service was held Feb. 13 at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church on Franklin Street. The church held the memorial for free, and gave handmade rosaries to Ms. Sheryl’s family.
Memorial contributions may be made to YAIPaks Outreach. Donate by mail at PO Box 3502, Clarksville TN 37043; or at their website https://yaioutreach.org/; or by texting GIVE to 844-335-1746.