Cheryl Anne Malmberg

Cheryl Anne Malmberg, aged 79, “went to visit the angels” as she would love to say on July 29, 2024, peacefully in her sleep. She was born on December 3,1944, to Frances and Bill Lawson. She was the big sister to Rhonda Williams, Lisa (Pat) Halcro, Rich (Kelly) Lawson, and Sandra (Rob) Spear.

Growing up, she loved to play the piano and excelled in school. During her junior year of high school, she met Lawrence “Swede” Malmberg. It was in her words “most definitely, love at first sight.”  Driving around in his 1953 purple Ford and eating at the Burger Master was a perfect date. She graduated from Great Falls High School in 1963.They married on August 1,1964. Cheryl started working for an optometrist in Great Falls while Swede started his sales career and they welcomed a son, Eric, in 1967. They moved to Nebraska for Swede’s job and Wendi was born in 1969. Moving again, they bought a ranch outside of Elizabeth, CO living there several years before deciding to move back to Montana to be closer to family. In 1976, they bought land outside of Raynesford and the Owe Five Ranch became their home. Dad still had his other business, so Mom became the “jill of all trades.”  She loved working at the family business, Malmberg’s Travel Agency in Great Falls but the 84-mile commute plus ranch and mom responsibilities were a bit much, so she left the agency to focus more on things closer to home. She loved learning and was a self-taught bookkeeper for the ranch, learned to play the guitar, paint, and do calligraphy all from books she would get from the library. She was savvy about the stock market and investing from this love of learning. The mailbox was always full of various business, décor, style, or food magazines. She was always keeping up with what the latest trends were. When asked about the design of the ranch house, she proudly would say that she found it in a Better Homes & Garden magazine and bought the plans for a mere $1.29.

Cheryl loved to garden. Growing up, her garden was the size of a football field or at least that is what it felt like when the kids were told to go out and weed. Thankfully, over the years it seemed to get smaller and smaller… maybe it was her not wanting to feed so many deer!

One of her love languages was cooking. Those harvest dinners and church potlucks were her time to shine. Her Italian heritage really shone through as she would fill that yellow giant Tupperware bowl with something magical. She took great delight in making sure her four grandchildren, Skye, Sierra, Ava, and Danny knew her famous spaghetti sauce recipe. She was watched while making it 1000x and Wendi made sure and compared what she was doing to what she had written down and no matter what, Wendi’s sauce was never the perfection that Cheryl’s was.

Cheryl was a master event organizer, Twin Town baseball scorekeeper, 4-H leader, founding member of Operation Santa, a Board Member of YWCA, 30-year commissioner of the family football pool were just a few of the things she loved to do. She also supported her husband with the Otter Creek Stage Company and the Otter Creek Volunteer Fire Department. She was known for her awesome table decorations and party themes.

Cheryl was a woman of great faith and loved the LORD. She organized a group of ladies to gather for a weekly bible study and that amazing group got together for over 40 years. The friendship and support of the ladies and of the prayer chain were invaluable to her over the years, especially when Swede passed on July 10, 2014, and her granddaughter, Skye (Malmberg) McKown on October 17, 2021. We know she is at peace being next to them and her loving dogs, Chablis, Koko, Brandy, and Poopsie.

She was an amazing, generous person. If you would like to honor her memory, her favorite charities were the Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, Montana Special Olympics, and Operation Santa c/o Stockman Bank Stanford, MT

She also absolutely loved to send and receive flowers!! Her favorites were pansies and yellow daisies. Send someone flowers today in her honor, she would love that.

At this time, we will be honoring Cheryl privately and are thankful for all the prayers from her friends and community.

We love you, Mom/Grammy.

Wendi, Scott, Ava, and Danny Higginbotham (Renton, WA), Eric and Kathy Malmberg (Scottsdale, AZ), Sierra (Malmberg) and Jake Harper (Phoenix, AZ) and Bailey.