Long-time member of UCC, Sherry Dawkins, executive assistant at Assurant, a Fortune 500 company in St. Petersburg, was born on Long Island but grew up in the hills of Virginia, swimming in the summers and skating in the winters on a nearby lake. She moved back to Long Island and went to high school there. A member of a musical family, she was active in chorus and chorale and still enjoys singing and playing guitar. Sherry’s father played piano and clarinet by ear; her grandmother, a classical pianist, went to Julliard, and nephew Keir Walton is a popular soloist in the Unity Music Ministry.
Raised Catholic, Sherry says that her spirituality evolved when she was young. She came to Florida in 1993, to Unity shortly thereafter, and has never looked back. She loves the values of the Unity church, and “ Leddy has a style beyond compare,” she says, “she makes it look so easy, seamless…and she brings in the audience.”
Single with time and energy to spare when she first moved to Florida, Sherry became involved in the Big Brother Big Sister program, bringing her “little sister,” 11-year-old Melissa (now in her 30s) to Sunday services at Unity. The two still maintain a close relationship. Sherry also volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, Special Olympics of Pinellas, Paint Your Heart Out and Dance Your Heart Out, to name a few. She is currently a volunteer at the Humane Society. In 2010, she joined Dunedin Toastmasters and became president of the club two years later. “As a toastmaster and officer, I gained confidence and leadership skills,” she says, proudly noting that during her tenure as president the club gained more new members in one year than in any other year since its founding in 1974.
In 2000, after her father’s transition, Sherry started bringing her mother, Hazel Miller, to UCC, along with her sister, Gloria Nolati. The three come every Sunday. To the mother, 93, coming to Unity is like going to a Broadway show, the star, her beloved Leddy.
Also, in 2000, Sherry met her British husband Brent when he was visiting his sister here. After a three-year-long distance relationship, Brent retired from his teaching position in England, and he and Sherry were married in a ceremony performed by Leddy. They moved to England, living first in Wales and then in a little town in Shropshire in “an adorable Victorian house” until moving back across the pond in 2006. “Living in England, I felt like a character in a Dickensian story,” Sherry recalls. While there, the Dawkins traveled to Holland, Ireland, Scotland, France, Spain and Italy. They have also traveled to Canada, the Bahamas and extensively in the United States. Sherry and Brent, who live, with Snowy, their precious rescue dog, in the Countryside area near her mother and sister, have been back to England several times and plan to return next year for a wedding.