Cheryl Baumgartner

Cheryl Baumgartner, 74, of Hesperia, died Monday, June 22, 2026, at the farmhouse where she had lived for more than fifty years, three weeks shy of the county fair she had helped run for most of her life. A dairy farmer's wife and partner in every sense the work demanded, she served thirty years as a 4-H superintendent and reigned, without ever once seeking the title, as the matriarch of Newaygo County fair week.

She was born September 9, 1951, in Hesperia, the daughter of Harold and Wilma Steenwyk, into a farming family and a farming town, and she never saw a reason to try either anything else or anywhere else. She married Ronald Baumgartner in 1971, a few months after his family's herd and her own good sense had introduced them, and moved a mile down the road to the dairy she would help run for the next half-century.

Farm-wife undersells it. She kept the books, ran the house, raised four children, drove the second tractor at haying, and pulled more midnight calvings than she could count, all while putting up enough canning each fall to carry the operation through winter. Her kitchen fed hired men, veterinarians, extension agents, and any 4-H kid who wandered in during fair week, and no one left it hungry or unwelcome. She considered complaining a waste of daylight and mostly acted accordingly.

For thirty years she was a 4-H dairy superintendent, which meant that from the day the fair opened she was in the barn before the dew burned off and there long after the crowds went home — settling nervous first-time showmen, fixing topknots on stubborn heifers, refereeing the eternal question of whose calf was whose, and quietly making sure the kid whose family couldn't afford show whites got a set anyway. A generation of Newaygo County kids learned from Cheryl how to lead an animal, lose a class with grace, and win one without gloating.

She loved her grandchildren, a good rummage sale, and the Tigers on the radio while she snapped beans. She is remembered for her stamina, which was legendary; for her table, which was open; and for thirty fair weeks of showing half the county that hard work and kindness are not opposites but the same thing, done all day.

She is survived by her husband of fifty-five years, Ronald; her children, Lisa (Greg) Haveman of Hesperia, Brian (Amy) Baumgartner of Fremont, Todd Baumgartner of Grant, and Julie (Scott) Renkema of Rockford; eleven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, most of whom she taught to show a calf; her brother, Kenneth Steenwyk of Hesperia; and thirty years' worth of 4-H kids now raising showmen of their own.

She was preceded in death by her parents; her sister, Marlene Timmer; and an infant son, David, in 1974.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that memorial gifts be made to Newaygo County 4-H, so that another generation of kids can learn in the barn what Cheryl spent thirty years teaching there.