Martha Cherry

Martha Kay Cherry, age 85, formerly of Fullerton and Yorba Linda, Calif., passed away Sept. 12, 2020, from the effects of a stroke.

She was a graduate of Kingfisher High School and received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1956.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Hallon and Alberta Holstein, as well as her brother Duane and her husband Truman.

She is survived by her son, Marc Cherry (Toluca Lake, Calif.); daughter Marcy K. Schoelen, (Kingfisher) and her husband Terry and their two children; and daughter Megan Egert, (Fullerton, Calif.) and her husband Steven.

Although gifted with a beautiful soprano voice, Martha made the choice to not pursue a career in opera as originally planned, but instead got married and had three children.

Her husband worked in the oil and power industry and she followed him to wherever his career took them.

They ended up living in Hong Kong, Iran and Thailand, among other places.

She was always an asset to Truman and he valued her intelligence, dry sense of humor and extraordinary ability to stay calm in the face of life’s unexpected challenges.

Martha always said she was content to be an ordinary housewife. She never expected to have much of an effect on the world.

But one day, in 2001, she had a conversation with her son, Marc Cherry, about how difficult it had been in the early years of her marriage, raising three small children while her husband was away on business.

As she confessed these feelings of isolation and desperation, Marc, an out-of-work television writer, got the idea to write a TV show that captured the experience of unhappy homemakers, trying to make sense of the lives they had chosen for themselves.

And so “Desperate Housewives” was born.

This series and the darkly comic adventures of its leading ladies was seen by millions of people in America and, indeed, all over the world.

While its cast and creator became well-known and celebrated for their work on this hit show, its inspiration continued to live the rest of her life quietly in Orange County, Calif.

Martha enjoyed her last years, pleased by her son’s success (and the accomplishments of her beautiful daughters) and the awareness that her life had touched more people than she could have ever imagined.

Martha proved that there is no such thing as an ordinary housewife. Every wife and mother has a fascinating story to tell.

Marc Cherry will always be grateful his mother allowed him to tell hers.