Remembrances of Sandy August 8, 2009
L. Price
1. “And gladly would she teach and gladly learn” (describing clerk from Oxford in General Prolog of Canterbury Tales)
Sandy loved learning things and loved teaching about them in about equal measure. A couple of years after she began teaching a 1 semester class on China, Japan, and India, she had the opportunity to travel to china and Japan. In China, I saw first hand that she could teach our guides many things about Chinese history of which they were unaware. This happened often in France also. She tried more than once to tell guides at Le Corbusier sites how she had worked in a church designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. But the French did not know Wright and were not very interested. A few years later when she was asked to teach psychology, she threw herself into that subject, learned everything she could (a lot!) and thoroughly enjoyed learning and teaching about it.
More somberly, when she contracted pancreatic cancer, she dug in an learned everything she could about it with, apparently, a great deal of enthusiasm.
Teaching and learning: that is what Sandy was about
2. Sandy was direct and straightforward and could seemingly talk about anything without being offensive.
There were many aspects of teaching Psychology where the ability to talk straightforwardly about taboo subjects was important. One she delighted in was the hypothalamus. She did not originate the description, but she told students that the hypothalamus controlled the 4 F’s: Feeding, fighting, fleeing, and…Reproduction. She regularly got quoted in the column called “Fly on the Wall” in the student newspaper when she was teaching at OPRF. These were things that teachers were heard to say that, out of context at least, seemed bizarre or outrageous.
She accepted her cancer essentially from the beginning. Of course she held onto hope while it was still reasonable, but as she learned more about this terrible cancer, she just accepted that there was no way out. A year ago she wrote “It is not my nature to ask for help but I know I will need to rely on you more and more. Meanwhile I plan to live as normally as possible for as long as possible and then abnormally for as long as that period lasts.” She documented how she lived exactly as she promised in her Caring Bridge Web journal, laying out the development of the cancer, her treatment, and the considerable fun she was having in the meantime.
Saying what was on her mind so things got attention and almost always so everyone felt good about it: that is what Sandy was about.
3. Sandy was generous and actively looked for ways to help
About 2 weeks before the end, she apparently thought about the collection of jewelry she had accumulated in a lifetime and how sad it was that it was likely to languish in my house with no one to put it to use. She put a great deal of energy that seemed to come from nowhere identifying which pieces of jewelry to give to which special friends. A few she was able to give herself, but most she made us promise to see that the pieces got to their designated new owners.
She was upset when she learned that she could not donate her organs because of the active cancer. Rather quickly however, in her research, she learned about a program at Johns Hopkins that would commission autopsies of pancreatic cancer victims and collect samples of the tumors for genetic research. She signed up immediately.
I think anyone who knew her will have a story about something she tried to give them, up to and including the shirt off her back, if she thought it would help.
Giving freely of herself: that is what Sandy was about.
4. Sandy was organized and made things happen.
We have heard many examples from other speakers.
A piece of email since her death came from a college psychology teacher who met her in an Advanced Placement workshop he conducted. Sandy took part in an annual gathering of psychology teachers One year, maybe 1995, the keynote speaker was giving his talk and there was a sudden power outage. I think you can guess what happened. The speaker asked if anyone had a flashlight. Sandy was prepared and he borrowed her flashlight to finish his remarks.
Herding cats: that is what Sandy was about.
5. Sandy was a joyful person. We have heard many examples.
Joy and laughter: that is what Sandy was about.
6. Sandy was about people
Sandy could be tired all day and go to a dinner party at night (or put one on) and would just get revved up—during the dinner pulling up facts and offering to do things for everyone at the table, particularly those she had not met before. Then come home and take easily an hour and a half to calm down enough to go to sleep.
She actively and successfully searched for connections. In Oak Park, she took some cookies to a mother with young children who had moved in nearby. When I got home, she delighted in telling me that I had gone to the same elementary school in Pasadena, 2 years ahead of this woman, though I did not remember her). She was in the class with my brother Alan and remembered my mother pushing my younger twin sisters in the double stroller.
People and relationships and connections: that is what Sandy was about.
7. I met Sandy at the first sit-down dinner of Freshman Orientation at Pomona College in September 1961. I just learned that a female classmate was at the table and observed sparks between Sandy and me. Sandy and I remembered that dinner vividly and did date the start of our relationship from that dinner almost 48 years ago. I don’t remember that other woman being there at all!
We were always interested in each other essentially from that moment on and were at least friends and even more than friends. But the path of romance was not particularly straight or linear. Sandy always said she intended to date at least 25 men before making her choice and settling down. She said that to her family. She said it to me. I found it a bit daunting. But in the end, we both had thought seriously about other people and came back to each other. As I said in many emails recently, though, what if one of us had accidentally stuck with one of those others? Too horrible to contemplate!
Sandy was an extraordinary teacher, student, lover, communicator, giver, enabler, spreader of joy, and lover of humanity. I may have been the one who could benefit from all of these gifts, but enough of them touched essentially all who met her to make her remembered as simply a wonderful human being. She gave me a lot and taught me a lot. She gave me a wonderful life.