You could say Sherrie Schouten’s life has been focused on her family since the love-at-first-sight moment she met her husband-to-be.
Now, sitting at the kitchen table in the house her husband, Jim Schouten, built and where they raised their three children, Schouten, 50, recalls that day like it was yesterday.
In fact, it was nearly 33 years ago, Labor Day 1977.
Sherrie Schouten, then Sherrie Bishop, was settling into her dorm at Cortland State University, N.Y., as a freshman.
When she saw Jim in the crowded dorm lobby, their eyes met and she knew.
“I thought, there’s the man I’m going to marry,” she said.
Several hours later, there was a knock on her door. Even though he didn’t know her name or room number, the determined young man had knocked on every door for four floors before he found her.
“We’ve been together ever since,” she said. “Through thick and thin, this relationship has been the cornerstone of my life.”
Schouten had planned on becoming a teacher, but after one semester the young couple decided to jump start their life together, left school and moved across the country to Port Angeles, where Jim had heard he could get work in construction.
“We came with two suitcases, a stereo and a box of records,” she said.
“My mother was horrified — we didn’t even have a fork or a plate. It didn’t matter –we were in love and excited about our future together.”
They married in a small ceremony in 1978, and Jim prospered in the local building industry. He founded his own construction company and built the family home on Old Mill Road in Port Angeles where they still live.
Starts a home
Schouten flourished as a mother, with son, Jesse, born in 1981, followed by daughters Katie and Jennifer. They are now 29, 25 and 23.
“We made the choice for me to stay home with them until our youngest was in school all day,” she said.
“It was tough on us financially, but the sacrifices made were so worth it. Our family has given us the most joy and still continues to.”
When Jennifer entered first grade, Schouten found work where she could still be near her children — as a para-educator at their school, Franklin Elementary in Port Angeles.
“It worked out great as we all left for school every day,” she said. “I never had to miss a Little League game, a performance or any of the hundreds of activities the kids participated in.
“They always had me there after school to talk to about their day — and this was the most important thing to me, my family.
“We had sit-down dinners every night,” she said. “We would go around the table and everyone had to tell the best and the worst thing that happened to them that day.”
Although her children are now grown and gone, Schouten still works four hours a day at the school.
She is sometimes accompanied by “Charles Barkely,” a golden retriever she had trained as a therapy dog.
Schouten had watched children on the playground struggle with making friends, and now uses Barkely to help them make friends.
“It has been wonderful watching him help children bridge social gaps and have an unconditional friend to go to on the playground,” she said.
It was also her children that inspired her to turn a hobby into a career, becoming a portrait photographer.
Schouten said when Jesse was a senior, she took his senior pictures, and all his friends wanted her to take theirs, too.
“That’s how it all began. I photographed many of them and loved doing it,” she said.
Soon she was being asked to shoot weddings, dances and more, and decided to make it a business.
In 2000, Schouten gave birth to a new baby, Sherrie Schouten Photography.
For Schouten, it has helped fill the “empty nest” void in her life, although she is in near constant contact with her children.
Jesse works as a tennis pro in Mill Creek, and has a wife, Janine and a daughter, Gracie, with a son on the way.
Jennifer is in her last semester of law school at the University of Idaho.
Mother’s footsteps
Katie lives in Portland with her husband, Jeff Terrill, and works as a talent coordinator for a sports modeling agency.
Katie has followed in her mother’s footsteps, starting her own photography business.
She got her start helping her mother on wedding photo shoots in the summer while she was in high school, and on her Web site talks about what her mother contributed to the “big day.”
“I was always amazed at what a large part she got to play in someone’s most important day of their lives,” she said.
“She always treated it as just that, an honor. Everything from greeting the bride and complimenting her up-do, to congratulating the parents of the bride and asking the groom about his nerves.
“What she didn’t realize is that she was helping set the tone for the day. Never pushy or invasive, but polite and complimentary from start to finish, there to work, but you’d never know it, because she was truly enjoying herself.”
Life after children
Schouten’s photography business helped her pay for her children’s college educations.
“I wanted to be able to provide that for them,” she said.
For the woman who had devoted her life to her children, having them leave, inevitable as it was, was difficult for her.
“It was the hardest when the first one, Jesse, left. The family dynamics changed,” she said.
By the time Jennifer graduated from high school, Schouten was immersed in her photography business.
She shot 160 senior pictures that year, in addition to dances and other events.
It kept her from thinking about the last of her children leaving home.
“It consumed all my extra time,” she said. “The photography really gave me a focus.”
Body, bond building
She also turned to body building, and for four years worked on honing her already girlish figure.
And, she found more time for her husband.
“It’s been really fun with him for the last two years,” she said. “He helps with the photography, and I give input into his building designs.”
What some families would consider to be an annual reunion is just another weekend for the Schoutens.
Family vacations
The couple rarely take vacations without including at least one of their children, she said.
“Most of our weekends are spent seeing one or more of them.”
Schouten is immersed in senior photos and shooting sports teams this time of year but finds time to reflect on her life.
At 50, she said she’s never felt happier.
“In my life, I aim for the perfect balance –family, friends, exercise, my business, my work at school, pleasures like tennis and going to garage sales,” she said.
“I am so grateful that I have such a busy fulfilling life and above all, good health to keep me going 100 mph.”
While she hardly looks the part, Schouten said she is thrilled to be a grandmother.
“Having grandchildren has been the most amazing thing,” she said. “It’s been an unbelievable joy.”
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Features Editor Marcie Miller, who edits Peninsula Woman, can be reached at 360-417-3550 or marcie.miller@peninsuladailynews.com.