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Untitled edit
This entry raises the question of how much of an undistinguished regular Joe Schmoe you can be and still have a wikipedia page. I knew Alan Cherry at Brigham Young. His distinguishing features in those days were a) his passion about being a Latter-day Saint, and b) his natural gift as a funny, inspiring speaker. According to this article as I found it, he hasn't done anything since that warrants public attention. Based on religious passion and comedic speaking ability, about half of the Southern Baptist ministers in the world should have Wikipedia entries. If Cherry were a Pentecostal, this entry almost certainly would not exist. He would be enjoyed as a motivational speaker, liked as a nice guy, and taken for granted. This article springs out of most active Mormons' feeling that anything the least bit out of the ordinary in the Latter-day Saint world is "special," blessed of God, set apart, "part of the Plan." And they want to be sure we know about it, to make it more likely we will join their church, which it is completely fair to call "quirky."
I knew Cherry in the 1970s and have just spent 90 minutes trying to tie his gutsy insistence on his own religious freedom in the 1960s to the larger African American surge toward equality. If Alan ever did something that reaches encyclopedic interest, it was that he had the courage to sign up for the Mormon Church long enough ago to be a rarity, and that he kicked and screamed to get out of the Service to be free to practice Mormonism as he saw fit. Then he was good at speaking out about it, and he was entertaining in the process. If that's encyclopedia material, Alan Cherry's in the club, at least on the back row.
His church service doesn't qualify him for the encyclopedia; his acting certainly does not; his education and work and family seem very man of the street. If Cherry has other achievements that qualify him even for this minor-league encyclopedia, those of you who created this article should hurry and put them down. --Alan Rasmussen, Tucson — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.228.45.95 (talk) 20:36, 18 November 2011 (UTC)