Obituary of Cheryl Herbert

Herbert, Cheryl July 7, 1955 to December 24, 2020 It is with deep sorrow and much love that we mourn the passing Cheryl Herbert of Plainfield, N.J. Cheryl passed away peacefully on December 24, 2020 at the age of 65, surrounded by her family. She was a loving wife, stepmother, aunt, and friend. Cheryl, born in Syracuse, New York, was the daughter of David Quackenbush and Bertha Riggall. She is survived by her loving husband Jeffrey Cove of 23 years, her stepson Michael and wife Maddison, her sister Joan, several nieces and nephews, and her canine companion, Rudy. Cheryl grew up in grew up Baldwinsville N.Y. and attended Alfred University and Rochester Institute of Technology, earning a degree in Marketing. After completing college, she worked for The Hershey Candy Company and later Panasonic, where she met and married her husband Jeff. Cheryl was a gourmet cook and relished making extensive menus and entertaining guests at her home. During the pandemic, she weekly made sandwiches for St. John’s Soup Kitchen in Newark to feed the homeless. Cheryl was a dear friend to many others and strived to be a friend to all. The world will be a little duller without her bright smile and giving heart. Visitation will be held from 4:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., on Monday, December 28, 2020, at The Higgins Funeral Home, 752 Mountain Blvd, Watchung, N.J. A Celebration of Life will be held on 1:00 p.m., Tuesday, December 29, 2020, at Saint Mary's Church, 156 East Main St, Amsterdam, N.Y. In Lieu of flowers, Memorial Donations may be made in the name of Cheryl Herbert-Cove to The American Cancer Society, P.O. Box 22478, Oklahoma City, OK 73123 or donate3.cancer.org. For her service on December 29, 2020 Cheryl’s Story Covid restricts the ability to be as thorough as I’d like, or she deserves. Instead, I’d like to talk just a little about the Cheryl that I knew. We were together since March 27th, 1990. Actually, she always wanted to make the official date April 1st, 1990. That’s because April 1st was our first date and March 27th was the first time we spent any time together. But April 1st was more romantic, so she decided; that’s the day that we celebrated. We both worked for Panasonic at that time. I worked on the 3rd floor and she was on the fourth. I would see her coming down the stairs at lunch time on the way to the cafeteria. I thought that she was attractive and very well-dressed but never got a chance to talk to her. She noticed me when I was doing training presentations during a sales meeting. As usual, I had missed one of my belt loops. That seemed to intrigue her. Bob Zangrillo, a very good mutual friend introduced us on March 27, 1990 at a sales meeting in New York City. We played foosball late into the evening. Our first date was the movie Pretty Woman. Good date movie! Afterwards we went back to her place where she cooked me an omelet (the first of many, many, more). Although I didn’t know it at the time, that night was the beginning of 30 years together. In the beginning, on weeknights, we talked on the phone every night. We had a lot to share. We both were recently divorced and we both were feeling pretty poorly about ourselves. Those long phone calls became the basis of self-repair, a deep belief in each other, and an understanding of what’s really important in life. But on the weekends we would get together and just laugh for two days solid. Cheryl was really good at laughing. I got to know Cheryl Quackenbush, farm girl, who grew up on East Mud lake Road in Baldwinsville, New York. BTW, If you google it, there is no West Mud Lake Road. I learned about her horse Smokey, who didn’t like to be ridden. And I learned that she played the piano, to my personal joy at Christmas time. She was the youngest of three by almost 15 years; so she always got to be the cutest little girl in the room. She knew cows and calves and corn and tomatoes. She used to get towed in a sled behind by her dad’s tractor for fun. She used to skate in a frozen pond outside her house after school. Her Mom, Bertha, worked and raised the kids. Cher was always industrious and she got that from her Mom. Cheryl’s big time reading material when she was a kid was---you guessed it--- her Mom’s Betty Crocker Cookbook; which she had memorized. That explains a lot! She used to name her cars. There was Nelly the Nova, her first car. She used to tell me that her dad let her choose any car on the lot that she wanted, as long as it was a brown-Nova-sedan. She had Kiki, a German car, which did what it was told. She named one of my cars Nick, but that was just because of the license plate. She explained that she didn’t name every car; just the ones that had a personality. Cheryl went to two colleges. First was Alfred University, where she met her two closest lifelong friends, Bruce and Dottie. But, in typical Cheryl fashion, she transferred to Rochester Institute of Technology where she got her degree; in marketing, I believe. Cheryl’s first big job after college was with Hershey Candy. She was so proud to be working for this big, all-American company that used Pennsylvania cows and gave access to all day unlimited chocolate. But every time we traveled out that way she had to drive by the Hershey Industrial School for orphaned boys. She just thought that it was so cool that Milton Hershey gave back that way and we always had to make a special trip to see that school. Cheryl enjoyed her work. She often told me the story of how the president of the Hershey Company singled her out to make a report on her work with the marketing data. “I just wanted to meet the Cheryl Quackenbush who made these excellent marketing charts!” I’m not sure that she ever realized that, even with those excellent charts, she was still the cutest girl in the room. Cher was pretty competitive. In the early 80’s, landing a better job brought her and her husband Jeffrey Herbert to New Jersey where she joined the Marketing Department at Panasonic. She was now a far distance from East Mud Lake Road, but she always thought she was a farm girl. She developed a reputation for being a diligent, efficient, and meticulous worker who had the knack of getting things done. But when she wasn’t working, she made friends. Everywhere! But she didn’t just make friends, she made lifelong friends. All of her friends were lifelong friends. There was a quality about her that just stuck. Although she didn’t always have contact, those relationships were important to her. Cheryl was a big proponent of Occam’s razor: “The simplest explanation is usually the best one.” It guided her life and it made her very astute about people. So very often I would go to her with one of my problems with a bunch of extraneous points of information, analysis, and possible theories to clarify what I was talking about. She would listen to me patiently and wait for me to stop talking. Then she would sort of lean back in her chair and say, “Well.” (This was drawn out slowly for emphasis) “You don’t have to look too deep on that one!” Invariably, she was right and she took lots of pride in cutting through my BS. I learned that Cheryl was an Aunt. Her brother and sister, Tom and Joan, quite a bit older that Cheryl, (sorry Joan), each had kids of their own who were close in age to Cher. So she became “Aunt Cher.” But I could see that she was more like a big sister that they looked up to. I always got a charge out of the fact that she was “Aunt Cher.” Over the last few years she had some struggles with her health. But she handled them with grace and determination. She never- ever- complained. Our first Christmas together we were both broke. I had not celebrated Christmas for a couple of years. But Cher was not about to let that stand. She bought a real (not artificial) 3 foot tall “tree,” one package of Dollar Store gold ornaments, and a six pack of “Reese’s Christmas Tree Candy”. Voila, Christmas for both of us. As some of you may know; that decorating thing got a little more involved over the years. She never had children of her own. But she loved Michael, Gareth, Danielle, Greg, and my older brother Tom. She did her very best to reach out and include them in her own way. After my mother passed she felt like she was the matriarch of the family and relished the role. This was vintage Cheryl. It was the essence of who she was. She thought little about herself and a great deal about those around her. She wanted to make people feel welcomed and cared for. And this is why she cooked. It was her expression of her love and it was her way to make sure that everyone in the room was taken care of. She had a special menu for every visitor. My brother Greg would call and say that he was going to come out to visit. Cher would immediately decide what she could make for him “He likes Chicken Parmesan; I can do that! Jeff, make sure you go out and get those cheese puffs for him. By the way, do you know if we have any fresh Diet Pepsi?” I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as fresh Diet Pepsi… Thanksgiving was the same. She planned for weeks (famously on color coded excel spread sheets). She cooked for days. But what she was really trying to do was to make a special moment for each and every person who came. This was her way. This was the way that she expressed how she felt without ever saying it directly. For me, I am so grateful for the time that I got to spend with her. A couple of days ago, I came upon a quote that works quite well here. “Grieve not nor speak of me with tears… but laugh and talk of me as though I were beside you. I loved you so…” That was Cheryl. “Love you babe!”