Probably all of us have people in our lives we greatly admire and we wish we had some of the personal characteristics they have.  When I was in my private practice in counseling psychology I had a number of occasions when I helped people identify those admired people in their lives and we even went so far as to identify the personal characteristics those people had SO THAT MY CLIENTS COULD WORK day by day at acquiring more and more of those desired characteristics.
For that reason, since today is my wife's birthday...I would like to write a historical tribute to her mostly for our children (it is good that they hear these things from their mother's husband...in this case, it is me...Sherri's husband).  I write this because she is an amazing person who comes from an amazing background and her clear life mission is very impressive.  Here goes:

Sharol Linden McUne (Sherri) was born Dec. 28, 1942 in Richmond, CA where her father worked in the ship yards during WWII.  She is one of four children born to Hal R and Linden Ida Knight McUne.  She is the second child with an elder brother and a younger sister and brother.
She always went by Sherri.  Her family had very little speaking of possessions and income.  So her father and mother decided to take over the family ranch in Burns, Oregon when Sherri was very young--around 5 years old.  To "make this happen" required that her family go to the ranch property and see if there was a way to live on it.  Upon arrival, investigating the land that made up the ranch 12 miles outside of town (Burns) they found an old building made of wood. It was just sitting in a field...empty...no windows....nothing inside.   They hooked up an old tractor to this "dwelling" and pulled it over under some trees closer to the road from town that passed by.
From there they began to clean it up and make it ready for the family to live in. No running water, no indoor plumbing, no electricity....just a wood dwelling.
Sherri grew up there and in another ranch house built later which also did not have running water, electricity or indoor plumbing until Sherri was off to college.  They would pump water from an outside well (Sherri did lots of this) and she remembers one day she and her brothers pumped water from the well at 35 below zero.
Her father would heat up a stone in the wood stove and wrap it in a cloth to put at their feet during the winter when they went to bed.  This hopefully would help them have some warmth long enough to go to sleep.
She tells of going up on the ridge above the ranch house to play musical instruments with her sister Sheila...and of climbing a tree outside the ranch house which bothered her mother so much that she just closed the curtains so she could not see how high they climbed!

In 1961 she was off to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.  She was very excited about getting a university education as that was uncommon in her extended family.  She attended three years and then left to become a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka  "the Mormons") in the country of Chile.  She learned Spanish and served there for 27 months.  She then returned to BYU where she completed a degree in English and Spanish.  The day after she graduated she married James David MacArthur in the Manti Temple of the Church.  Over the course of their lives together they have had ten children: Toran, David, Paul, Mike, Lindi, Lori, Don, Debbie, Mark, and Sharolyn (in order of birth).  Lindi/Lori and Don/Debbie are twins so Sherri had two sets of twins in 23 months....and at that point Sherri had 8 children with the oldest being just seven years old.  Eventually there were 9 under 9 and 10 under 12.  At another point Sherri had eight teenagers at the same time and eight in college at the same time during several semesters.
With all those small children to care for Sherri still found time to write her own commentary on the Book of Mormon as a gift for her children.  It took a number of years and is some 200 pages long.  She wrote down her own ideas and feelings about the entire 500+ pages of the Book of Mormon. A bound copy was eventually given to each of her children as a token of her love for them and her desire for them to receive the teachings of their mother by studying what she had written.
She has dedicated her intelligence (she is VERY bright), her spirituality, her patience and kindness and her love and concern to her ten children and her family.  She could have done many other things but she WANTED to be with her children and teach them herself by precept and example.  It was about them and not her.  She almost never complained and felt very blessed to be THEIR mother. She realizes others have other careers but this was the one she personally chose.

A number of years ago we had a special HONOR OUR MOTHER NIGHT in November of that year so that it did not coincide with any holidays or birthdays etc....it was just a special day to honor her.  Each of her children and her husband wrote a special letter of love and honor to her---we bound the letters and gave them to her in a book. We spent the evening with her children and Jim showing their gratitude for all she had done for all of us.

In 2010 Jim and Sherri were asked to leave their home in Orem, Utah  and go to another country (Chile) to preside over a mission of the Church for three years.  Since she had been a young missionary in Chile in 1965 she was thrilled to go back but it was hard for her to leave her children and grandchildren.  Sherri is the grandmother of 40 grandchildren now.  The oldest is 16. She dearly loves all the missionaries we worked with from 2010 to 2013 in the Chile Rancagua Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  They are like her own children to her....
She is a private person, fairly quiet..unassuming....does not like attention drawn to her (I will probably be in trouble for writing this and putting it on Facebook....) and is a woman of perfect integrity.  She lives what she believes.  She tries to be a good example for her children.  They all know there is no one else quite like their mom.
She is a student of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.  She is Christ-like in all she does.  She is steadfast....she knows who she is and where she is going and nothing will knock her off track regarding her values, beliefs and commitments.
In closing let me describe one experience that will give you an insight into her and how she lives---when we had the eight children and the oldest was 7 (and the youngest four were two sets of twins ages 2 and brand new)...I came home from work one day to find this----Sherri in a rocking chair with the older twins on her knees and the two baby twins in her arms. So four with her...the other four known as "the older boys" were playing on the living room carpet nearby.  She looked up at me and smiled as I came in the door.  To her, she was doing what a mother does to care for, teach, love and guide her children.
I honestly believe that her contribution to the world having given birth to and raised her ten children..who are all wonderful people...is a far greater and longer lasting gift to her community and nation than any other type of career she could have chosen instead. Mother is the name of her chosen career.  You can know Sherri McUne MacArthur by one word and that is "selfless".
Today is her birthday and I am putting this tribute to her on my blog so all of you can know the person that I married and my children and grandchildren call "mom and Grandma Sherri"..She is awesome.  Jim MacArthur