Sharon Lynn Cook (Sherry to all who knew and loved her), was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on July 29, 1944. In 1953, she immigrated with her parents to Portland, Oregon. She became a U.S. citizen at the age of 10. As a child, Sherry and her parents lived in many different neighborhoods in the Portland area. Her parents bought their first house when Sherry was in high school, and she graduated from the first class of the newly built Sunset High School in 1962. After graduation, Sherry enrolled in beauty school. Through friends at school, she met Thomas Duane Cook (Duane), her future husband, and the love of her life. Sherry pursued a career as a hairdresser and continued working through the birth of her two children, Kim and Chad. She retired to be a stay-at-home mother shortly before Chad started kindergarten. Sherry didn’t stay retired for long. She went back to work when her father retired from the Uptown Hardware, the store he started in 1950. Sherry took over as buyer for the house and giftware departments and helped grow the store from its original 4000 square foot space in the Uptown Shopping Center in Northwest Portland to the now 20,454 square foot space in the Pearl District. She continued buying for the (now Pearl Hardware) store until she retired in 2022. Sherry was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor in early 2024. She died on March 30, 2024.

Those are the brief facts of Sherry’s life, but those facts don’t explain who she really was, and why she will be missed beyond words by so many. Throughout her life, Sherry was a caretaker. She cared for her younger brother Kenny when he was born in 1955. She cared for her parents when they needed her. She gave so much love and care to Duane, Kim and Chad that one would think she had nothing left to give, but that wouldn’t be true. She was the friend who was always there when you needed her. She was a surrogate mom to so many of her “kids” who worked at the hardware store. She could work at the store, keep the house spotless, make dinner every night and cookies for after school, ferry Kim and Chad to every dance class and sports practice and still find time for a glass of wine and a laugh with a friend. When her grandson, Ian, was born in 2006, she poured all of her love, attention and energy into being the best grandma ever. Whether eating at a favorite restaurant or spending countless hours riding TriMet, Sherry and Ian were together. She faced a lot of hardships throughout her life, but she was a force, a fighter and a survivor. She was the person you called when you needed someone to talk you off the ledge. She was the person you called when you wanted a partner in crime. She was much too much to be summarized in a couple of paragraphs. She was small in stature, but she will leave a hole too large to fill in many lives.

Sherry will be loved and remembered forever by her husband Duane, her children Kim and Chad, her son-in-law Omar, her grandson Ian, and by the many people she befriended in her too-short life.

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