As the last of her family Ms. Cheryl Burkert reflects
on her eclectic life hopeful of being able to leave her mark before the end. Yet
upon meeting her one will see a vibrant, joyful, and adventurous girl who
refuses to give into age. She constantly keeps a naturally cheerful attitude
despite all that she has witnessed over the years and even the troubling time
that awaits her. “I probably had more experiences than I had planned and it
helped me grow.”
A Military Brat
Cheri’s family may have been unusually small in her time
but they were what she describes as the old Happy Days program. Her mother was
an excellent homemaker and her father was an Officer in the chemical core of
the Army. Being a single child Cheri grew up shy and somewhat unsocial but she enjoyed
the attention and support she received from her parents. As a form of birth
control in that time, her mother had an ovary removed but even as a military
family having more children would have been too difficult for her parents.
Her father attempted to keep their lifestyle as
casual as possible but Cheri was always ready for a change from Kansas. “If I
didn’t really like the place I knew we were gonna leave it. I liked variety, I
liked the idea of seeing what was going on in different areas. Even in this
country you have to adjust to the cultures a bit.” Cheri had always been high
strung and a worrier so traveling through different states and beginning school
in Maryland uneasy. She was afraid of standing out in a neighborhood where all
the children played and grew up together and all the families knew each other.
It was an unusual setting in which she could not relate because she ended up on
her own each time her family moved on. Still she always knew that things
wouldn’t remain difficult. “You have to try to make yourself part of the
community as you go along.”
Time in Alabama is unforgettable for Cheri since it
was the first time she experienced segregation and witnessed the beginnings of
Martin Luther King Jr. Most of her schooling was interracial but here Cheri was
forced to attend a white middle school. The heavy racism was a world Cheri
could not understand coming from an open-minded family. She was always aware of
the military personnel on school grounds and was afraid of how the black students
would perceive her but was luckily only encountered once because of her race. Feeling
as though the world was moving slowly Cheri cannot really describe her time
there because it feels as if she is reading it from a book. Then Cheri said
with a wild laugh, “I was so glad dad was only stationed there one year. I still
can’t understand all that.”
Being an only child in oftentimes strict military
families, makes Cheri happy that she was able to have leniency that allowed her
to have exciting teenage years. It was a time that was all about the cars and
she loved everything about it. The popular kick it spots were always at the
drive-through and drive-in theatres—anywhere they could enjoy the ride and show
it off to everyone. As a shy kid with no siblings to help push her forward,
cars were always one thing that Cheri could hold on to. Cheri often went with
her friends to a dirt field where kids would race over hills while always
trying to avoid the cops who regularly patrolled there. “Sometimes I thought ‘why
am I just sitting here’ but I really liked those things because it was the only
time in my entire life that I could be kind of wild.” Cheri looked deeply
pleased as she described the times when she would get in a Chevy and rev it all
the way up a hill just to feel the jump to the bottom of the other side.
Trying to Grow Up
The
unpredictable lifestyles and inconsistent locations Cheri had to adapt to with
a father in the military stuck with her as she left home. It took a while for
Cheri to find her way still this happy woman feels very fortunate that she was
able to have a supportive family that never forced her choices and supported
her free lifestyle. “I didn’t want to get married, I didn’t want to settle down,
and my mom never pushed me. I just wasn’t a real social person,” says Cheri, “I
think it was my restlessness inside that I had to get away from the crowd.”
Since her Senior year in high school she had been
working at the army exchange on base which she stayed at for several years. After
an unhappy semester in the dorms of Kansas State University she moved on to work
as an administrative secretary for Mountain States Telephone Company after her
father decided to permanently move to Colorado in 1965. A year later she
decided to return to school while working part time as a pharmacy filler. Unable
to become focused on her future Cheri was jumping around temporary jobs and
delaying school until she could find something meaningful to do. She always
knew that she loved to write when her professors assigned essays in class
because it was a place where she could go off on her own and be able to finally
focus herself. Finally in 1970 she graduated from the University of Colorado
with a Bachelor’s in Journalism. In 1972 Cheri’s father encouraged her to apply
to the county of Denver where she ended up working with the commission on community
relations.
“Most of my heavy duty writing was there.” Here she
constantly worked with campaigns, wrote press releases, and attended community
meetings which she later turned into articles discussing the dangers of gangs
in poor parts of Denver, the schools, youth core, the police, desegregation,
and the many more things she encountered. Cheri enjoyed the single lifestyle of
a writer in which she could do her craft while exploring the world around her
as she constantly did while a military brat. People were usually very nice to her
and cooperative when she was investigating but being part of a community
improvement organization there were several threats to the building. Cheri remembers one incident where they were
bombed but didn’t think it was anything serious. It was still the beginning of
desegregation and people were armed for protection.
“I had to learn everything on my own, there wasn’t
anybody there to explain things to me and for a long time I was just jumping
around trying to see what I could.” Even while at a serious position in her writing
her smart-aleck attitude almost caused her trouble when she answered a phone
that was ringing for the Indian Community representative who was not in one day.
When the man on the other end claimed to be the Brad Pitt of her time, Marlon
Brando, she truly couldn’t believe it. “I came so close to saying ‘well this is
Elizabeth Taylor’ and I’m so glad I didn’t say that. I can only imagine how the
boss would have clobbered me.”
Cheri unintentionally became a genuine writer that I
know many people admired. Her writing was solid, typical journalism that opened
eyes into the Denver community for the good and bad that it was. In her work
she was able to meet celebrities, politicians, and revolutionary activists of
her time such as the Chicago Seven—a serious conspiracy/activist group. "I just wish I could have been more hard to them about putting my byline on all my work, that really gets me," said Cheryl almost grinding her teeth. After
four years of difficult work Cheri says she became tired of the job but this
was also the time that her father, in his fifties, suffered a heart attack and
passed. “It felt like everything was coming down on top of me, I couldn’t seem
to get a handle.” She quit the commission of Denver and soon after continued to
the University of Denver for her Master’s.
The Wild Life
After happily reminiscing on her early years Cheri
shouts “You know thank god there are such things as temporary jobs.” The
temporary lifestyle kept Cheri busy while on the lengthy path to finding
herself. Cheri didn’t have much experience in one area so her frequently
changing jobs kept her doing unusual things she wasn’t used to. After spending
many years with her boss and the commission of Denver she was able to take a
lot of the support he gave her and apply it within herself to try things she
wasn’t familiar with. However as a foolish girl she may not have always known
the effect of her actions. When she took a temporary job with Information
Handling Services in Englewood as a simple indexer she never expected to become
a product specialist where she traveled to New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and New
Mexico while she had a horrible hatred of flying. Seeing what each city had to
offer reminded her of exploring the places of the U.S. as a kid. Now she was
able to witness the horrible smog in L.A or the awful humidity of Florida. Even
in New York her associate there showed her the crazy New Yorker lifestyle. After
a speeding cab ride back to the hotel late in the night, the associate still
had enough energy to drag Cheri to crash a dinner party where they pretended to
be friends of an elite guest. With big eyes Cheri describes it as something she
would have never done saying, “Man I cannot believe New Yorkers really are this
crazy.”
Other times during her travels she would run into
the trouble of having to buy an extra ticket for her monster block of a
computer when it would not fit in the upper compartments. While necessary for
her work, she despised having to spend the extra money to double strap it since
she was never sure of allowing it in the bottom of the plane with the baggage. Continental stewardesses were always nice
about the issue while others she would not utter the expressions that described
them. Once, on a business trip to Florida Cheri’s dreary coworker pulled into a
gas station in large black community that had recently been having many riots.
Cheri was unbelievably scared, ranting, and sweating that she acted in a way
she had never acted before. After a long drive of cursing she was finally
relieved. A week later when Cheri was happily back home, that entire neighborhood
suddenly blew up with a wild riot. Knowing that something similar could have
happened while she was there Cheri was scared for her life. “I just can’t
believe it. It’s one of those things that makes you wonder how you end up
coming out of it ok.”
The years when she lived in Denver Cheri familiar
with the lifestyle after studying the city for so long that serious dangers didn’t
seem to serious around her and oftentimes left her front door unlocked. While
her mother was busy gardening and Cheri was washing her hair in the basement
there was someone on the main floor quietly pulling things out and when Cheri
went upstairs she thought she had somehow gotten into someone else’s home. “That
just scared the peewad out of me.” On another occasion Cheri had the feeling
that something was going on outside and when she looked out to see two men with
a duffel bag circling her house she called 911. After the respondent told her
to flash her flood lights she saw them rush to their zippy car and screech off.
Cheri explains, “You think you’re relatively safe in this world but you’re not,
not really. Those are lessons you learn.”
Just one month after moving into her current home in
2000 a man ran his truck into the side of her townhome that doesn’t even sit on
a corner. Cheri describes her anger since there was absolutely no reason for
him to have done that she says, “There’s a lot of people out there that are
just crazy and they don’t seem to care what they do.” Sadly it took Cheryl a
couple of years and a lot of her saving to fix up her home after the incident. By
this time Cheri’s mother had become very ill and was slowly deteriorating so
Cheri spent all her time with her now that she was retired. Because of the
reality of her mother passing Cheri would never leave her mother alone but couldn’t
always do everything with her. Her neighbor and close friend Ruth helped a lot
when Cheri needed any kind of help. Ruth says that even with her mother
deteriorating Cheryl was as lively as she had always been. “Compared to me she
still feels and acts very young, even when horrible things happen to her.”
Growing Old
After everything she has endured Cheri seems most
happy to have had such a free young life without having to settle down and be
able to experience the strange people of the U.S. Although Cheryl never
expected that she would worry so much of the short future ahead of her. She worries
that after the fun time she had quickly spending her savings after retiring young
she will need to find work and gets scared having to think about what could
happen if she cannot make anymore payments especially since she has no more
family left.
With her age she can only last part of the day
before she becomes too tired and needs to relax before starting again. On the
bright side Cheri always spends part of her day doing what she has always
enjoyed—writing. It’s now the happiest
part of her life because she can sit down and disappear from the world. She
explains that whether it is about the dog, the cat, or what she sees through
the window it feels good to get something special out of her. “If I had a
different life I wish that I could have been a really great writer.”
One would never know that Cheri has lived through
many incidents because her happy attitude and silly laugh after every word
makes you believe that all her dreams came true. Even with her heart condition
and suffering a heart attack a couple of years ago, she is hopeful that
something will turn out well for her. She says, “I have kind of disappeared deliberately
but I have friends who I know will help if I need it. ” Cheri constantly
worries about who will take care of her legacy and all the things she will be
leaving behind including her parent’s treasured belongings. She hopes that her
very close friend she has known for years will be able to handle her last
requests although she has not yet brought it up to her since her friend is also
growing old and has a large family that she still looks out for.
“I can’t tell you why but I like things about his
place,” says Cheryl about her current situation. She explains how it is true
that after all her years of living she learned everything she needed to. She especially
learned to trust her inner feelings because those instincts usually end up
saving her. Once Cheri was followed for miles by a man to the middle of nowhere
and once she almost flew through the front windshield of her car and she
explains, “When scary things happen to you….you suddenly become aware and you
don’t let those things happen to you again.”
After a lifetime of events Cheri tries to be more
careful but sometimes even that is not enough. The only time when anyone would
ever see Cheryl more quiet and gloomy is when she describes the horrific event
that occurred only a few doors down. When one neighbor shot and killed another
neighbor and his innocent daughter over parking disputes it affected Cheryl
although she can’t really express why. “I think in this day and age due to all
the things people have access to, you can live wherever and those people can
take you down. You just do the best you can and pay attention. I’ve lost my nerve
in some way but you can’t just keep moving when stuff like this happens. You
learn to stand against it.”
By: Jessica Espinosa
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