CHERRY, Paul

The White Mountain Independent, Show Low, Arizona ~ 02/11/2014 Paul Cherry, 70, English teacher and drama director at Northland Pioneer College for 18 years, died Feb. 1, 2014, in Tucson of cardiac arrest in his apartment at Cascades of Tucson. Paul was introduced to Shakespeare as a child by his parents, David and Lucy Paul Cherry, and the Bard’s works became for him a kind of gospel to be urged on all who would listen, and many who would not. Cherry earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of California at Riverside. His teaching in California included directing a writing laboratory at Riverside City College. He co-wrote and co-edited “When the Mode of the Music Changes: An Elective Course in Song Lyrics and Poems,” a two-volume foundation for a college course in the poetry of rock music published in 1975. When he arrived at Northland Pioneer College in the fall of 1978, he used it to teach such a course. According to Jan Geddes, one of his students, “No one dropped out of that class.” He also taught English composition, world literature and Shakespeare, and relished working with students individually. Cherry directed performances of some of Shakespeare’s plays, and modern plays such as Ibsen’s “Ghosts” and “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams. He hosted a news program for the college on KVSL, the Voice of Show Low, and contributed columns to the White Mountain Independent. He resigned his teaching post in 1996. He climbed to the top of Mt. Baldy for the fourth and last time in 2000, and wrote an account of getting lost and delusional in the dark on his way down from the summit, titled “Lakeside Man Haunts Night on Mt. Baldy.” For several years before his move to Tucson in 2012, he was a very jolly Santa Claus for a large store in Pinetop-Lakeside. Born in Brawley, in California’s Imperial Valley, on Feb. 15, 1943, he grew up in San Diego, home of an annual Shakespeare festival at the Globe Theater. His first marriage ended in annulment, his second in divorce. He is survived by his daughter Ashley Anne Cherry of Cottage Grove, Ore., and her children: Gavin Cove Haas and Zoey Sierra Haas; brother David Cherry of Leesburg, Va.; nephew David S. Cherry of New Orleans, La.; nephew Mark Paul Bulliet, son of his late sister Lucy Cherry Bulliet, both of New York City; and cousin Ramona Garcia of El Paso, Texas, and her family. A memorial ceremony will be held at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 12, at Cascades of Tucson, 201 N. Jessica Ave. in Tucson. His brother David would appreciate receiving remembrances from his friends and former students at dacherry3@yahoo.com.