OBITUARY: META CHERYL WHITE
Meta Cheryl White died peacefully in her sleep on October 28, 2024. She was 67. The cause of death was neurodegenerative disease. Her dementia had been diagnosed in 2016.
Cheryl’s specialty was making any and all feel happy, involved, valued, and cared for. Her open heart extended to all animals, as well.
Her friends in Mammoth Lakes, Bishop, and Lone Pine revered her as leader of the pack and a guaranteed source of general hilarity. She, in turn, considered her mountain and desert friends as the source of her happiness. If you picture her talking and laughing, you’ve accounted for most of her life here. The rest would be potluck dinners.
As her beloved Daddy always scolded her, “You think life is a hoorah and a picnic!”
Some of the most fun this group had was hosting a Halloween party at the Bishop Fairgrounds for 10 straight years. Cheryl and friends made their own costumes each year. For her, blood and gore was the common theme, but there was room for Octomom, a weird twist on Miss Kentucky, and Dorothy. Decorations were over the top.
As publisher of Scenic 395 magazine from 1995-2014, she greatly enjoyed the friendship of hundreds of business owners and employees whom she visited while driving and driving and driving Highway 395 in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains and upper Mojave Desert. Her typical advertising sales visit was a half-hour of talking about the business owner’s family, health, and outlook. Far from a mere ad spot, these business owners were getting a bit of Cheryl Magic. They stuck with her through their own thick and thin. She considered them family, whether they bought an ad or not.
Though living her last 37 years in California, she kept in touch and visited with Kentucky family and friends via frequent flights or cross-country drives, up to three times a year.
Cheryl was born September 16, 1957, in Scottsville, Kentucky. She adored her parents, Tom White and Marion (Hicks) White. Cheryl had a simple and magical childhood growing up, playing and working on the family tobacco farm, 200 acres of rolling hardwood forests and planted clearings. She survived DDT in the fields, poisonous snakes swimming in Puncheon Creek, and running with kitchen knives up and down the hollow to cut another grapevine to swing on.
She graduated from Allen County High School and the University of Kentucky (though most of her university years were at Western Kentucky University). Her degrees were in English and Art.
During the 1980s, Cheryl was an employee and regional manager of three gift store chains: Coach House, It’s A Small World, and Art Explosion. Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, and Florida were her home bases. In 1987, she opened and managed the first Disney Store, in the Glendale Galleria.
She came to Mammoth Lakes in 1988 on the arm of her first husband, Michael Coffey. Michael was a charmer, but it’s likely that she married him so she could be with his daughter, the wonderful Eryn Coffey, who is still in Mammoth doing great things. After their divorce, Cheryl lived in Mammoth until 1999.
In Mammoth, Cheryl was a newspaper reporter for the lively Mono County Review-Herald. Then she started a desktop publishing business (an ‘80s/‘90s thing: look it up) and invented the Scenic 395 magazine. It catered to travelers and the tourism industry along the eastern Sierra Nevada. After 19 years, she sold the magazine to another publishing company. She was writing a biography of the (then) 100-year-old artist Carroll Thomas when the stirrings of dementia halted her work.
Cheryl met her future second husband, Jeff Putman, while both wrote for the newspaper. They got together in 1990 and loved one another until her passing. Cheryl and Jeff, dogs and cats in tow, moved to Lone Pine in 1999–no more walking dogs in a blizzard for Miss Cheryl. After a lengthy warmup, they finally married in 2007 in Cambria, California.
Following her diagnosis, Jeff cared for Cheryl in their Lone Pine home. She spent her final six months at Pacifica Memory Care in Bakersfield, California. An attentive and patient staff kept her comfortable until her passing. Her talented and devoted 1-to-1, Elsa Aguda, kept Cheryl safe and otherwise healthy.
Cheryl is survived by her husband and partner of 34 years, Jeff Putman, of Lone Pine, California; sister Janet Bryant (husband Michael), of Bowling Green, Kentucky; sister Ann Jones (husband Billy), of Summerville, Georgia; brother Mark White, of Holland, Kentucky; stepdaughter Eryn Coffey Caler (husband Luke), of Mammoth Lakes, California; and numerous cousins, nieces, and nephews in the South, as befits her Kentucky upbringing. The earlier deaths of her parents and her brothers Todd and Thomas nearly wrecked her.
Cheryl’s friends will gather for a memorial celebration on January 11, 2025, at the First United Methodist Church fellowship hall, 205 N. Fowler, Bishop, California. We will begin at 11:30 a.m. It’s casual. We will serve a light lunch after a short program. It’s friends + food, which would please Cheryl to no end. Please RSVP to: metawhitejan11@gmail.com or text/voicemail 760.937.1745.
A second memorial will take place near the family farm in Kentucky, on March 22, 2025. An 11:00 a.m. graveside gathering at Haysville Cemetery near Lafayette, Tennessee will be followed by a 12:30 p.m. community gathering at the East Allen Volunteer Fire Department, Holland, Kentucky.
Donations in Cheryl’s memory to an animal charity of your choice would be most appropriate. Otherwise, just throw a potluck!
