Cheryl Wallgren

Cheryl Wallgren, homemaker, gardener, animal-lover and mathematics professor, died Thursday, Dec. 12, 2002, at her rural Jackson home after a 44-month struggle with ovarian cancer.

Survivors include her husband, Tom, and her son, Charlie; her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Paul William Keller; her brother and sister-in-law, Tim and Vilma Keller; her sister and brother-in-law, Iris and George Dordoni; and four nephews, Daniel, Joseph and Benjamin Dordoni and Kevin Keller. She was preceded in death by a nephew, Nicholas Dordoni.

She was born in Cape Girardeau on March 2, 1948, and attended rural Abernathy School. She graduated from College High School in 1965. She earned four academic degrees: a B.S. in mathematics from Southeast Missouri State College in 1969; and from the University of Missouri at Columbia, an M.A. in mathematics in 1971, an M.S. in statistics in 1975 and a Ph.D. in statistics in 1977.

She taught mathematics and statistics and did statistical consulting at Illinois State University, at Millikin University, and since 1981, at Southeast Missouri State University. She was a demanding and caring teacher. Outside the classroom, working on many academic projects and committees, she was energetic, painstaking, outspoken and deeply committed to high academic standards.

She married Tom Wallgren on Aug. 18, 1973. She was a member of St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Cape Girardeau, where she worked on many committees and projects, and was particularly active in vacation Bible school. She attended Sunday school at her girlhood home congregation, Zion Lutheran Church in Gordonville. She loved her extensive flower gardens and vegetable gardens, and she raised and cared for many animals, especially multiple varieties of poultry. She was thankful for her large, extended family and for her many friends, students and colleagues.

The visitation for her will be today from 4 to 8 p.m. at Ford & Sons Mount Auburn Funeral Home, and from 8:30 to 10 a.m. Monday at Zion Lutheran Church in Gordonville. The funeral will be at 10 a.m. Monday at Zion Lutheran Church with the Rev. Wayne Schweisow officiating and the Rev. Paul Short preaching the sermon.

Memorial gifts may be made to St. Andrew Lutheran Church, to Zion Lutheran Church, to the Mathematics Department at Southeast Missouri State University or to Lutheran World Relief.