Sept 28, 1950- August 13, 2023
Terry Lane Cunagin passed away on Sunday August 13, 2023 at 72 years old, after heroically surviving 13 years with cancer.
He was born on September 28, 1950 to Zelda Morine Parker and James Andrew Cunagin in Clay County, KY. He attended West Milton High School in Ohio where he was co-captain of the football team and played doubles tennis. After high school, Terry attended Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga, Tennessee. While there, he met Freddie McGill and Sharon Williamson who would be lifelong friends. In the summer of 1971, Terry and Fred both worked at Schroon Lake Word of Life camp in upstate New York. They famously performed feats of daring providing camp entertainment as Freddie, a marshall arts expert, split watermelons on Terry’s stomach with a sword. While there, Terry met Karen Lindskog from California, who was a hostess at the Inn. Karen and Terry began dating that summer and were married from 1973 until 1997. During that time, Terry completed a B.S. in Athletic Administration at California State Fullerton and worked with both the gymnastics and baseball teams. Karen and Terry had two children, Amanda and Maclane. In 1988 their family moved to Fallbrook, CA where he cultivated a large fruit and vegetable garden alongside the acres of avocado trees on the farm. For most of his years in Fallbrook, Terry worked at Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base and in 1997 he transferred to the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base. In 1998, he married Sharon Williamson and joined her family with her two children Beth Anne and Holly. Terry continued working in the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base Community Services where he was the Branch Head of Commercial Recreation until 2023.
He was proud of being a recovered alcoholic of over 15 years who loved his family and worked hard at everything he put his attention to. He tenaciously advocated for Beth in retaining her University of Oklahoma volleyball scholarship, he lived across the street and spent lots of time with Holly’s boys, he planted towering palm trees for his grandkids, he shared a love for gardening and Home Depot with Mandy and even flew out to build some projects, and he and Shari never passed up a good piece of furniture that could be restored.
Terry was kind, generous, and easy-going. You couldn’t go anywhere in public without Terry making a new friend, and if you were with him, he’d likely brag on something about you he was proud of. He was a remarkable gardener (even in the heat of the desert), he had a lifelong passion for fishing, and he loved music. Terry was creative and could build just about anything, whether birdhouses in the garage with his kids or waist-height easy-gardening raised beds for the elderly folks at Shari’s Desert Rose. Terry was a seasoned storyteller in a long line of storytellers, he was funny and loved a quick joke and a wink (the wink often punctuated with those crystal blue eyes and long wild eyebrows that sometimes got away from him). He loved playing poker, cracking pistachios, making killer salsa and guacamole, and playing with grandkids- goofing and making duck sounds to keep them laughing. We suspect he single-handedly kept Haagen Dazs in business with his obsessive commitment to their ice cream. And in the end, he was a warrior in his battle with cancer, rising above the pain and long challenges of chemotherapy and various treatments in a good-natured manner.
He is survived by his wife Shari Cunagin, his children; Amanda (Cunagin) Hamilton and husband Andrew and their daughter Esly, Maclane Cunagin and Little Dog, Beth Anne (McGill) Wiggins and husband Chad and their children Aria and Micah, Montana, London, and Caleb, and Holly McGill and her sons Tristan and Caiden, along with his siblings Deborah Strunk and James Cunagin and their families, as well as numerous friends and family in CA, OH, and KY.
