Cheryl Anne Corkran

February 27th, 2025 a wonderful woman known as Miss Cheryl Corkran passed away after a very long, very hard fight with metastatic breast cancer. She was a band director for 38 of her 65 years, with 28 of those years at Greenacres Middle School in Bossier City. She was a well-known educator, a leader in music education groups throughout the state and an amazing musician in her own right. She taught in New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and Louisiana touching a number of lives from every imaginable group of persons across the southwest and deep south from Navajo children, to rural ranch kids, to young city dwellers, to challenging college students. And if asked today, those students, many of them now middle-aged adults, would almost universally say that she was kind, fair but firm, fun and would go to extraordinary lengths to help a student who really wanted to learn to play an instrument. If a family couldn’t afford an instrument, and the school didn’t have one to let the student rent, somehow Cheryl always found a way to get that child an instrument. Even if it meant driving five hours away to purchase a used one, sometimes out of her own pocket.

On her very first day at Greenacres, she had to break up a rather heated confrontation between two boys in the band. While talking to one of the boys, the other one picked up a metal folding chair and swung it at her. With a word of warning from one of the other students, Cheryl managed to send the chair in a direction away from the other children and the would-be assailant in yet another. Once the dust had settled, no one was hurt, but the principal told her that “those boys will be taken out of band”. She disagreed, and asked that after they served their required punishment, they be sent right back to her class and she worked with them to make them better musicians and better people. And that young student who tried to hit her with a metal folding chair, he was accepted to and graduated from Annapolis.

Cheryl was born in Baltimore, Maryland but moved all over the country and the world with her Air Force family. Due to her father’s assignment to Barksdale, she attended high school at Bossier High School and played bass clarinet in both the marching and concert bands. After high school she attended and graduated from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches with a Bachelor of Music Education. After she began her teaching career in New Mexico, she began work on her Master of Music at Eastern New Mexico University. That ultimately lead to her taking a job in West Texas to cut down on travel time to and from Masters classes. After obtaining her Masters, Miss Corkran moved to East Texas to work at Jacksonville Middle School. This was to put her closer to her parents who were then retired from the Air Force and were building a log home in Rocky Mount, Louisiana. What talented young musician lady would pass up an opportunity to hand sand a seemingly endless amount of baseboard trim? Once she could give up her weekend carpenter’s assistant job, she moved again. This time to complete post graduate work toward a Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

In 1993, Miss Corkran returned to the greater Shreveport-Bossier metroplex where she started a very successful career teaching, tutoring, and playing in various symphonies. For fun, she began making costume jewelry that she sold at home-parties and craft fairs. After retiring, she branched out into refurbishing, repairing and selling antiques. Probably because she didn’t want to lose those carpenter skills learned from her father.

Cheryl won a lot of awards in her teaching career, most recently as the first inductee to the 8th District Band Director’s Hall of Fame. But she was not one to seek recognition for herself, only for her students as she helped them become accomplished musicians. Her favorite form award was having a former student call or write to her and tell her of the difference she made in their life.

Preceding Cheryl in death were her parents, Norman and Charlotte Corkran and infant grandson Zachery LaRosee.

Left to cherish her memory are her wife and best friend of 30 years, Pamela LaRosee, son Joshua LaRosee wife Melissa and daughter Georgia. Daughter Addie Pilat, son Benjamin and daughter Sofia and the children’s father Dr. Martin Pilat. Adopted daughter Catherine Conrad, husband Bill and children Lydia and Elliot. Also mourning Cheryl’s passing is her younger sister Adrienne Corkran Plantinga and college-age sons, Nathan and Walter as well as Cheryl and Adrienne’s Aunt Debbie and Uncle Ron Walters. A host of friends, colleagues and former students will miss her too.

Cheryl’s family, especially her wife, wants to say special thanks to Dr. Prakash Peddi and his incredible office staff for their care, concern, love and support throughout Cheryl’s fight. Also we’d like to thank you to the ER staff and Cardiac Step-Down Unit at Willis-Knighton Bossier for the care they provided in Cheryl’s last days.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a contribution to the American Cancer Society, the Susan G. Komen organization or a contribution to your local food bank.

A visitation for Cheryl will be held Saturday, March 15, 2025 from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM at Hill Crest Memorial Funeral Home, 601 Hwy 80, Haughton, Louisiana 71037, followed by a a celebration of a life well lived at 2:00 PM.