Medina's Caleb, Lauren Sherman honor late father's legacy

Caleb Sherman was 6 years old and sister Lauren was 5 when their 36-year-old father Dan, a beloved teacher and coach in the Medina school system, died suddenly on June 3, 2014. Caleb, now 18 and a 6-foot-1, 180-pound senior wide receiver and team captain for the Medina football team as well as a lacrosse player, and Lauren, 17 and a standout junior setter for the Bees volleyball team, were so young they remember their father more in general terms than specific occurrences, but both are determined to live their life in a way that would make Dan, a teacher at Root Middle School and Waite Elementary and a varsity assistant coach in football and baseball, beam with pride. "He's always in my head," said Caleb, who carries a 4.0 grade-point average and plans to major in sports management at Ohio University. "I know he would be proud of what I've done and I know he continues to look out for me. It's important for me to keep his name in the back of my head and continue his legacy." Dan, who played baseball and was the quarterback for the football team at Willoughby South High, where he wore No. 10 in both sports, left the same impression on Lauren, who like Caleb wears No. 10 in honor of their father. "I always think about him before volleyball games," she said. "I play like my dad is in the stands. That's something I remember before each and every game." As Caleb and Lauren, who has a 4.2 GPA and plans to major in education or occupational therapy, have grown from little kids into young adults, they've heard many stories about their dad, a loving, vibrant, live-life-to-the-fullest prankster who died after collapsing during a workout, not knowing he had cardiomyopathy. Some of those stories have come from teachers they've had at Blake Elementary, Root and Medina. Others have come from neighbors. Many more have come from their mother, a sixth-grade science teacher at Brunswick Middle School who has remarried and legally changed her name to Alissa Sherman MacDonald. Alissa also now has an 8-year-old daughter, Marley MacDonald, with husband Scott, the senior director of youth sports partnerships for the Cavaliers who legally adopted Caleb and Lauren in November 2020. "She's been extremely strong," Caleb said of his mom. "All of us were going through the tough times, but she had to go through them and also make us feel like we were going to be OK." "Oh, my goodness," Lauren said when asked about her mom's strength. "Of course we miss our dad a lot, but our mom is always there for us, so that makes it enough. She's just so strong and she's always loving. She always puts others before herself, especially us kids." WATCH OUT Dan Sherman, a 1996 Willoughby South graduate who was on what Alissa called "the 5½-year plan" in college, was in his fifth year at Ohio University when a junior cheerleader named Alissa Ales, who graduated from Perrysburg High in 1998, caught his eye. Both majoring in education, Dan worked his way into Alissa's friend group and then finagled — that's Alissa's word — his way into several of her classes. "He just always had such a fun personality," Alissa said. "In classes, he would move his watch so the sun glared off it and right into my eyes. That's how he got my attention the first time. We hit it off and started dating by the end of the (school) year. "He was always a jokester and a teaser. That was his sign of affection, and Caleb 100% inherited it. He had such a fun energy and loved life. He did everything to the fullest." In 2002, Dan began teaching language arts in the Medina school system. The following year, Alissa got a job in the Brunswick system. On Aug. 7, 2004, they were married. A little less than three years later, Caleb was born. Fifteen months after that, along came Lauren. "Dan was a complete class act," said former Medina head football coach and current assistant Dan Sutherland, who shared more than the same first name with his fellow Root teacher. "He was very sarcastic and I'm the same way, so we hit it off right away. "He was humble, hard-working, great with kids and always wanted to get better as a coach. He was a phenomenal coach for the program and the kids." A history teacher, Sutherland had Caleb and Lauren in class and sees many of the same traits in them. "Caleb is just like Dan," he said. "He is very sarcastic and funny, but also very determined and quiet. Lauren has Dan's kind, sweet heart. I always tell Alissa, 'Your kids are some of the greatest kids to come through Root.' They're just awesome kids." LEAVING A LEGACY Dan's death, which came after he collapsed during a workout at Root 18 CrossFit, shocked the Medina and Brunswick communities, which quickly rallied around Alissa, Caleb and Lauren. "It made me feel that I was loved and cared for," Caleb said. "There were always people looking out for me when times were hard. The community built a family around us to make us feel connected when he wasn't around anymore." Dan was so respected and well-liked that his memorial service at the 1,125-seat Medina Performing Arts Center was packed. "The thing I remember most is when he passed away, his football players all came with their gold jerseys on," Caleb said. "I thought that was the coolest thing ever that they were there to honor me and my family." Those gold jerseys were instituted following the 2010 death of 49-year-old Rick Stich, whose oldest son Jeremy played football for the Bees at the time. This season, when Medina wore the special jerseys for its homecoming game against Brunswick, Jeremy spoke to the players about the history behind them and singled out Caleb. Lauren, meanwhile, smiles broadly whenever her volleyball coaches, some of whom she's not sure even knew her dad, use the word "Shermanate" or "Shermanator" to describe one of her performances. "A lot of teachers who worked with him and a lot of neighbors have told me stories about him," she said. "It was always how good of a person he was, the impact he had on their life. The one thing I always hear, whether it's from teachers or students, is how good of a reader he was to his fifth-graders (at Waite). He was so alive when he would read." Following Dan's death, the Sherman family had white shirts made with a picture of a green baseball diamond and football field merged together, accompanied by the words "To Teach...To Touch...Forever." On the back the shirts said, "Shermanate — To care for others, putting their needs before your own." Each year, family members vote on a scholarship in Dan's honor that is awarded to Medina students who best exemplify those traits. The plan is to give one to a boy and one to a girl, but some years more are handed out because it's too difficult to decide. "Every year, we're always picking the same people," Lauren said. "That really shows we all know who my dad was." While Alissa has made sure Caleb and Lauren learn as much as possible about Dan, she's also made sure they realize their father would want them to be happy, enjoy the present and look forward to the future. They, in turn, gave her two great reasons to push on in the difficult days, weeks and months immediately after Dan's death. "They were my world," Alissa said. "They kept me grounded. It would have been so easy to curl up and not get out of bed, but I didn't have that choice. I was all they had, so I poured everything into them. With Dan's philosophy of living life big, I just knew he would never want us to slow down or stop. "I got an amazing amount of support. His school at Waite took us in with open arms. Our neighbors, the teachers at Root and (the former) Willetts Middle School (in Brunswick, where Alissa taught at the time), they all wanted to do anything they could to help." TWO DADS Scott MacDonald, who had dated Alissa when they were freshmen and sophomores at Ohio U and ran into her and Dan from time to time after they were married, was working out at a facility in Rocky River when he saw a local television report about Dan's death. "I literally fell off a stationary bike when I saw his face on the TV screen," he said. Scott, who had married and gotten divorced without having children, went to Dan's calling hours and, about a year later, ran into Alissa at a Kenny Chesney concert at what was then called Quicken Loans Arena. She suggested they grab lunch sometime, and two weeks later, they did. It lasted five hours. They started dating again, and in July 2016 they got engaged at Disney World's Magic Kingdom, with Caleb and Lauren helping Scott with the proposal. On Oct. 14, 2016, Scott and Alissa got married in a private ceremony on Sanibel Island in Florida. The only other attendees were Caleb and Lauren. "Alissa helped me navigate being a father figure while also respecting the boundaries of their father," Scott said. "I wanted to earn being viewed in Caleb and Lauren's eyes as a dad. That's why there were a few years between when we got married and the adoption." That adoption was sparked one night when Alissa, Caleb and Lauren watched the movie "Instant Family" while Scott was busy working for the Cavs. The movie is about a young couple planning to start a family before stumbling into the world of foster care. Husband and wife plan to take in one child, but end up with three. "At the end of the movie we said, 'We need to do this,'" Lauren said. "It was definitely special." In April 2020, on Scott's 40th birthday, Caleb and Lauren presented him with their adoption papers. That adoption became official on Nov. 16, 2020. "It gave me goosebumps," Lauren said. "Everybody was crying happy tears. I remember how he broke into tears because it was something we thought of. "He's always there for us. Every June 3 we call my (biological) dad's angelversary, but (Scott) is always there. He took on the role he needed to and has truly been a blessing." TWO MORE 10s Caleb and Lauren are great older siblings to Marley, but out of love and respect for Dan they elected to keep Sherman as their last name, with Alissa and Scott's complete blessing. "My dad was in the community and everybody knew him as Sherman, so we both wanted to keep that legacy and keep the name going," Lauren said. "We wanted to make sure people remembered who he was." "I'm the only guy Sherman with the last name," Caleb added. "I wanted to keep that and pass it on in memory of him." Caleb and Lauren honor Dan further by wearing his No. 10, which he also wore while serving as a Medina assistant baseball coach under Nick Kaplack. "I am beaming with pride," Alissa said. "They were forced to grow up so fast, but I just feel truly blessed. They are such good kids. They're good leaders, good role models and great older siblings. They're good athletes. They're really just the all-around package of what a parent would want a kid to be. "It makes me sad that Dan never got to see this side of them. Sports and academics were so important to him, but Caleb and Lauren were so young they were just beginning their journey. The fact they're both varsity athletes and great students, I know Dan can see that. I have no doubt he smiles down and watches over them." Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4046 or rnoland@medina-gazette.com. Follow him @RickNoland on X.