IN HER WORDS: Her Facebook Bio:
“Consultant, technologist, partnerships, executive producer and investor”.
She had 1.8K friends on Facebook….quite a high number, eh?
SANDRA MEMORIES 9/20/61- 3/9/2023 by Nina Pellar Le Baron
HOW DO YOU DISTILL A PERSON’S LIFE IN WORDS? THEIR IMAGE TO THE WORLD? Tall, thin, blue eyed, long hair blonde beauty of Norwegian/Welsh decent, fiercely independent with burning creativity. A talented, artistic, witty, intelligent visionary woman filled with passion . Interior Designer, Web Site designer that could write code, Graphic Designer, Photographer, Videographer, Virtual Reality creator, Jeweler, Painter, Gardener, Sailor, Boater, Sober, cat and animal lover. She was direct and to the point. She grew up on the East Coast, going to school in Bethesda, Maryland, went to college in Colorado (#coloradorockymountainschool) and settled on the West Coast landing in Sausalito. An all American Girl who loved the simplicity of wearing cashmere, but also loved the florals in “Johnny Wais” embroidery. Her last outfit was wearing sunglasses and red roses. No kids, she left behind 2 cats- Coco and Max, which her step brother, Peter White is to take care of with her beloved house and garden in Sausalito .
I’ve know Sandra since 1987 (so 36 years). We meet at an architectural firm in downtown San Francisco called ”Ebert, Hannum and Volz” (long disbanded). She was in the Interior Design section, and I was in the architecture section. Drafting was all done by pencil and paper in those years. She had just broken up with Micheal McBride, Michael Maharam came into the office to show fabric samples, and they started dating. I started dating Paul Le Baron, and we would go out on dates together.
She worked for some of the best interior designers- Charles Pfister at Gensler in SF was the one that I remember and who she would bump into all the time and he still remembered her- impressive!.
Sandra loved sailing and Maharam bought a little sailboat to go out on SF Bay with and would invite us to go along. They broke up right when Paul & I were getting married and it was a bone of contention that we did not invite Maharam to the wedding ceremony, in which Sandra was one off the bride’s maids, along with my 2 sisters. She was like a sister to me, and we had so many common interests.
Maharam later went on to date the actress Daryl Hannah (he was dashingly handsome). Sandra and I did jewelry together, horse back riding in the Marin Headlands, and she helped babysit our kids and was a frequent dinner guest at our house in Mill Valley. Many of the photos I have taken of Sandra were of her sailing on friend’s boats. She would get out on the water whenever she could. At some time she lived in Santa Barbara and she mentioned her friends from down there.
She moved down to LA to work for Skidmore Owens and Merrill (working under Laura Rottet), and went to film school. Her design background was from the Colorado Rocky Mountain School, where she had many lifelong friends. Her father passed away in a tragic airline crash in 1979 when she was 18 years old, which was devastating to her-American Airlines flight#191 from Chicago to LA- crashed upon takeoff. The engine ripped off on the DC-10 and all 273 people on board perished. Her parents had divorced before that, and her relationship with her mother was always difficult, so much so that she ran away to live with her dad at 16. She did manage to make up with her mom, in the end, who passed away last year. But the years of torture from her narcissistic mom left a bruised soul that sought compassion.
In LA she met Steven Ackroyd and they continued a relationship in the Bay Area. He was a tech magnet and they almost had a child it turns out….she confided in me at the end. Never knew this until the end.
She had a wonderful eye and did some film projects, and dabbled in writing scripts. When she moved back to the Bay Area, she started up a stock photography website called “SF Bay Images”. She sold her photos to hotels in the city and Marin and many off her website. Helicopter Photography became her passion and she captured many iconic shots from up high of the Golden Gate Bridge and sailing events. She met Ferry Boat Captain, Burke Beardsley, and they started up a Boating Whale watching business in Sausalito called “SF Bay Adventures”. They were business partners, as well as romantic partners. She designed their website and populated the site with her nature photography to increase business. Their romantic relationship was extremely rocky and eventually they sold the business, with Burke taking the profits and buying a house in Napa.
Sandra became very involved with “Bill”, AA sobriety and attended meetings religiously. She mentored hundreds of people thru the program and nurtured them to help recover from alcoholism. She was a rock star! She will be missed in that community. She then started building websites for people, and started “Interforte”. She built many websites for a variety of users. She built my first website for my architectural business (Island Architecture) when I moved to San Juan Island in 2002.
Sandra had an earlier bout with cancer , Non Hodkins Lymphoma, that she attributed to her landlord spraying “Round-up” in her garden in Sausalito, that she loved to garden in. She was in a class action suit with “Round-up” at the time of her passing. She recovered from her 1st brush greatly reduced, recovering to get into healing modalities. VR was just getting started (Virtual Reality), and she found a partner, Sasha Tueni, to explore the possibilities. She thought that VR could be a great tool for Cancer patients undergoing chemo treatments, and tried to promote that idea. When AI came out, she was right on it and developed many friends thru this new cutting edge medium . She came up with many fantastic images through “MidJourney” that involved inputing descriptive words of an image into their software to come up with new images create by artificial intelligence that sourced all the images available on the internet, and combined them into new images. One of my favorites that she did was “The Queen of Hearts” that depicted a real heart with a crown on top.
Her favorite thing to do every year was to re-arrange her house for the best “Feng Shui”. As she explained it to me, the stars align differently each year (for those of you into astrology) and these different alignments can affect your home. To combat negative energies, to increase positive energies, you first are supposed to clear clutter. This involves a deep cleaning of all window ledges and outer perimeters of your house (which is a good thing to do on a yearly basis). Then the next task is to decipher the recommendations of various Feng Shui practitioners that post their “Cures”. For instance, on the North corner of your house,
Good influences coming
Enhance Metal and Water
Avoid Wood, Earth, Fire
So you are supposed to add metal objects and objects that reflect like water, like a mirror in that corner of the house.
In 2016, we were living in the same building in Sausalito (because she informed me that the lady that had been living below her of the last 20 years was leaving and I could get the apartment). After a year, the landlord sold the building out from under us. Paul & I went back to Washington State. Sandra lucked out because her neighbor across the street, Mr. Kaiser, had lost his wife and needed a roommate to help him out at 94 years old. Sandra moved in with him and helped him with shopping, gardening. It was match in heaven, as he needed help and Sandra needed a home. He left the house to Sandra in 2019 when he passed at 96 years old. Sandra got to enjoy the home for 3 years, renovating the bathrooms, capturing the back garden that her neighbor’s thought was theirs. She loved to garden and was in the process of leveling out the upper back yard to create a sanctuary with water views. Hand watered everything and it thrived with her care. She fed the possums and foxes, leaving out bowls in the winter to get them through.
I went with her to “Greenport”, Long Island on 2 occasions, that area called “The North Fork” by locals. Her Great Grandfather was a Norwegian sea captain there and sailed on one of the 1st America’s Cups Boats. Her mother was born there, went to high school there and supported the local Maritime Museum. She grew up going there for vacations with all of her cousins, so it was her refuge to go back to. She reconnected with all of her cousins and aunt there on these last 2 trips in 2021 and 2022. Part of her family was from the “Isle of Mann” (North of Wales), part Norwegian. My family is from Wales, so we had that connection.
Her best friend was Burke Beardsley, the ferry boat captain for SF Bay Ferries (passed away in his sleep after his 2nd Covid Vax May, 2021). They almost married, broke up numerous times, but in the end were best buddies. He was her confidant until his un-timely passing at 64 years old. He was in great health. His death was devastating to her, and he left no will, left her nothing. It was a shock, as he had realized his mistakes and told her that he would include her in his will. Just never got around to it. Lesson- do your will now. You never know.
In the end she was done in by her 2nd cancer. Her uterine cancer was supposed to be curable, but it was a rare form. She had a hysterectomy, did chemo, lost all her hair, did the radiation (even though there was no sign of cancer, just microscopic) and it still came back to kill her. She did everything that her doctors wanted her to do. Here are her last words to me:
“I think in retrospect I would not opt for chemo for microscopic cancer with the way the world is. They gave me a drug called Neulasta which generates white blood cells in your bone marrow. I was crippled in pain, couldn’t walk. I wondered what if it didn’t go away? It attacked my arthritis in my hips and every other injury I ever had. Never felt so much pain.
I don’t know. Maybe I should have just taken my chances. But I’m too old for this. Anyway hope you never need it. I wonder if I got cancer again because of the Covid vaccines and boosters. I was cancer free for so long, doing all the protocols to prevent it from coming back. Right after my 2nd vax is when I started feeling bad.”
I told her that I would see her in the next lifetime, the last time I saw her in the hospital. I was with her for 5 days at Marin General, trying to be her pain advocate. She was on a morphine drip, but it ran out after 15 minutes and they said she could only have it once an hour. After 15 minutes, she would have me go out into the nurses station to make sure that someone was coming in an the next hour. Half an hour past the hour, a nurse finally would come in. She is not in pain anymore. She said the pain was like hot molten lava in her bones. Rest in peace my dear friend. She was 62 years old and is dearly missed. You will find her on walks in the Marin Headlands and Rodeo Beach, drives out to Point Reyes Station and Timber Cove and at the beach at Greenport with its orange and yellow shells. And the Colorado Rocky mountains. She is now part of the water under the Golden Gate Bridge where her ashes are spread 6/10/23 off the Schooner “Freida B”. RIP Sandra- she is with Burke now! Onto their next life! She will be coming back! She touched so many people’s lives and was of service always. Heartfelt goodbye….another life cut short by cancer.
She is survived by her Step brother, Peter White and her real brother, Robert Cannon. Her sister Catherine Cannon is buried with her mother at the cemetery in Greenport, Long Island, New York.
Miss you Sandra!
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