StemCell Therapy

Nearing 92, Cheri McDaniel is losing her eyesight. But her vision for new ideas is going strong.

Early this year, McDaniel finished her third book, and she says a fourth one might be on the way. On the West Feliciana Parish property where she is riding out the coronavirus pandemic with family members, she is creating plans for the gardens, ponds and structures she has built over the past five decades.

She also continues to raise money for charity work in Haiti and Swaziland through Rotary an organization she joined while creating a medical and educational mission in Mexico. She was only 75 then.

This likely surprises no one who knows McDaniel, who also has been a house designer, builder and antique store owner.

"I think her energy comes from her passions, either her passion to write, her passion to help others, her passion to serve," said Martha Stuckey, president of theCapital City Rotary Club, of which McDaniel is a member.

McDaniel suggests she doesnt deserve much credit.

Im a simple farm girl, she said. I feel that God is driving the vehicle of my life or I wouldnt still be here. These things just evolve.

Its been that way since McDaniel, who was born in 1928, grew up on a Union Parish farm through the Great Depression, earned a home economics degree and became a hospital dietitian. She met her first husband, Jack Smith, at LSU, and his oil industry work took them to El Dorado, Arkansas, and Memphis, Tennessee, before coming to Baton Rouge in 1947.

In each location, McDaniel designed the couple's home. Despite no formal education in construction or architecture, she discovered she had the ability to visualize a house and taught herself how to draw up plans that carpenters and other tradesmen could follow.

In Baton Rouge, she was a homemaker until their only child, Susan, was old enough to go to school. Since being a dietitian no longer appealed to her, she told Jack in 1958 that she was going to design and build homes for a living. She says she was the only woman to run such a company in Baton Rouge at the time and designed about 200 homes in 27 years.

I never did two houses alike, McDaniel said. Id meet with them, find out what they really wanted to have in a house, what was their budget, and it was my goal to be able to give them everything they wanted, and most of the time I was able to do that within their budget. And they left me alone.

Along the way, she founded Fireside Antiques in 1982, which Susan managed until becoming pregnant with quadruplets in 1986, so McDaniel took over and ran the business until 2003.

When she was in her mid-70s, sensing that God was calling her to the mission field, she moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and started the Holistic Educational Center, a facility that provided both medical care and education to improve the lives of impoverished residents there. She wrote grant applications that helped fund a retinopathy clinic at the local hospital there.

However, after four years, the 6,000-foot altitude was causing McDaniel fainting spells, and her second marriage was ending, so she returned to Baton Rouge. She joined the Capital City Rotary Club upon her return, writing grant proposals that created funding for outreach projects.

McDaniel moved to St. James Place retirement community. That's where she got the inspiration to write.

It began with her life story, titled He Lays the Stones for Our Steps, which she followed with Snazzy Seniors, telling stories of interesting and inspirational people she met. She sells the books through her Rotary club, and its proceeds go to club projects.

In her third book, Descending Toward Darkness, Illuminated by Faith, she tells the stories of people shes met who have come through challenges. God, she said, gave her the title. It was printed just before St. James Place went into lockdown in March, which McDaniel believes is no coincidence.

God had to have known that this pandemic was coming to give me such a strange title, she said. I wasnt planning to write a third book. I had never studied creative writing. So, God is still keeping me going.

The title also reflects some of McDaniels own experience.

A cancer survivor, she has faced numerous recent health challenges: congestive heart failure, shingles, knee surgery and failing eyesight that forced her to hand-write passages of the book in large letters so someone else could type them. She continues to write, currently focusing on spiritual topics.

I am now legally blind, but nothing seems to stop our heavenly father, she said. My writing has become a wonderful adventure.

One of many.

Every morning after breakfast, an assistant drives her in a golf cart for two hours to look over 388 acres near Lake Rosemound where McDaniel has built houses for family members and created a forest and garden from what was once a cow pasture.

McDaniel once held Easter sunrise worship services on the property and wanted to build a church there, but when the family didnt agree due to lack of suitable parking space, she built a small, open-air meditation chapel. Hundreds of encore azaleas bloom multiple times a year, creating vibrant color even in the August heat.

Its like I feel reborn in this environment, McDaniel said. Im still alive, and Im still being inspired by the infinite creator. I take no credit. His presence is so strong.

Read more here:
Cheri McDaniel is almost 92, but that's not slowing her down one bit - The Advocate

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