Community Volunteer Awards

2022 Honoree

Sherry & Lou Meyer

Hidden Gems

Sherry & Lou Meyer

In a modest home on Walnutwood Way, a pair of longtime residents are pumping out a lotta love.

They would tell you it’s a way to keep busy, and that is certainly true. But the truth is that Lou and Sherry Meyer are touching lives of people they will never meet. And until tonight, very few people knew about it. They are Hidden Gems.

Lou’s unmistakable New York accent betrays his history. Like a lot of people in Rancho Cordova, he arrived thanks to the US Air Force. Along the way, he met Sherry, and they eventually got hitched, blended their families (he had two daughters, she had three) and they settled in Rancho Cordova. That was 42 years ago.

Lou had always loved wood working, learned as a teen in New York while being a garbage collector. After the collection was done each day workers reported to the shop and there he learned how to work with wood. After the Air Force he became a middle school wood shop teacher in Sacramento, teaching students how to make useful items which they sold for profit – items like podiums and wooden pencil holders.

Meanwhile, Sherry was using sewing skills learned from her grandmother to make clothing for her daughters and herself when money was scarce. She expanded to a quilt for a queen size bed when she couldn’t find something she liked, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Lou and Sherry are both now long retired from paying jobs, but they are paying it forward in a big way.

Three days a week, Lou heads for the garage and warms up his saw. From a fresh piece of plywood, he carefully carves out the shapes of boats, animals, or holiday figures for the project of the week. At week’s end, all that’s left is wood scraps and 75 perfect shapes, which he delivers for coloring projects at schools and other locations like the Sacramento Children’s Museum all over Rancho Cordova. He will put some in the box he keeps on his front porch for neighbor kids, who know they can always find something new waiting for them at the Meyer home.

Inside, Sherry is settling in front of one of her four sewing machines. She fills the hours making quilts for babies and children, which eventually end up at Shriner’s Children’s Hospital, women’s shelters, or anywhere a piece of homemade warmth will brighten a day.

The Meyers will tell you they are just the kind of people who like to keep busy, but the numbers these two are pushing out might surprise you. Here’s the math:

Lou produces about 75 wooden shapes per week, devouring a sheet of plywood in the process. He racks up an average of 3,000 pieces a year. He’s been doing this for 10 years, bringing the grand total to about 30,000 – and still going strong.

Sherry’s quilt production went wild during the pandemic when there was nothing else to do, but she has averaged 200 quilts per year for the past 15 years. That’s 3,000 quilts.

Their hobbies can be pricey as plywood prices double. Sherry said quilting friends will supply her habit by donating fabric to the cause, but the Meyers don’t seem to be too concerned about all that.

Said Sherry: “I have had a great many blessings in my life, many when I really needed it, and this is my chance to pass it on." Lou said sometimes he will get a little thank you card from a child or a class in a school, and that’s enough for him.

Little acts of kindness, volunteered from the heart, is what living in a great community is all about. Everybody and anybody CAN do it -- the Meyers actually do.

Lou travels to about a dozen schools to make his rounds. He might leave a note with his creations and sign it “The Ghost.” 

And that handle is appropriate, since he and Sherry are bona fide “Hidden Gems” – an idiom which means something which is extremely outstanding and not many people may know about it. Well, that ends tonight.

To Sherry and Lou Meyer: thank you for sharing your talents to brighten a day, inspire a child, warm some cold toes, or give a displaced child something to cherish. 

And thank you for reminding us that the small things matter. If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

Meet a pair of Hidden Gems – Sherry and Lou Meyer, the wonders of Walnutwood Way.