Sandra Teel Trainer

Alex Haley wrote: "The family is link to our past, bridge to our future." Sandy - daughter, sister, cousin, mother, aunt, grandmother First and foremost, her children - Dwight, David, and Marsha - were her life as they were growing up. Then, to her delight, the grandchildren - Dylan, Annika, Dehlia, and Dalton elbowed their way into Sandy's life in more recent years. Her face and voice lit up when she spoke about them. Her children and later her grandchildren were the sun and the moon for Sandy. They were each a celebration for her. As was Marsha's discovery and integration into her birth family. Please notice the light in her eyes in the photographs with family. When she was young Sandy - and many of us in our generation - enjoyed large family gatherings, especially around holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. In those days Thanksgiving, at our house with a proscribed menu, included the Radnor-Lower Merion football game - with Uncle Paul (Sandy's father) leading the band at half time. Christmas at the Teels meant the exact same menu as Thanksgiving, with the addition of sparkling wine (even for the youngest of us), and carols led by Uncle Paul on the piano. Those Christmases of her youth had a real impact: Sandy later came to make a fuss about Christmas with elaborate decorations throughout her house and with the Cookie Factory. Sandy organized the Christmas cookie factory like a drill sergeant: year after year she pressed her mother, my mother, and an honorary aunt into indentured servitude to make scores of dozens of cookies. For days. Many of us benefitted from their efforts. Few armies have been as disciplined as Sandy's cookie enterprise. Few workers were as happy to serve as those three women. Or so happy to be finished their work. Sandy built on the family gathering tradition when she hosted a number of extended family reunions at the farm in Bucks County. Dozens of us would gather. Three generations would play and eat and swim and visit together. The swimming part in her pond echoed the times family went to Uncle Bud's and Aunt Mary Gray's for softball, picnics, and swimming. As her children married and had children of their own, the family gatherings continued. Sandy would go on and on (and on) about get-togethers in Idaho and Oregon. (Speaking of Uncle Bud, who was an oral surgeon, he actually saved Sandy's life when she was in college and a dentist had botched wisdom teeth extractions.) For the cousins - there were nine of us including Bob, her brother - For the cousins, Sandy herself was a life-saver. Both figuratively and literally. Time after time, cousin after cousin (or brother) she came to our aid. With pitch perfect support. She was a genius at knowing what we needed and tireless at rescuing those of who needed rescuing. She was the one who welcomed me when no one else in the family would in the late 60s. When the opportunity came for Sandy to fulfill a dream and a curiosity to live in a city, she thought of only three places, each near one of her children. New Orleans was too hot. St Paul was too cold. The goldilocks city was Portland, near Dwight and his family. She moved there. They moved to Thailand for a year. She also loved and enjoyed and sent early birthday cards to her aunts and uncles, her niece and nephew, her cousins once (or twice or thrice) removed. To all in the family. Sandy not only celebrated her children and grandchildren, she also thought about her antecedents. She revered her father for his gentle, caring ways and for his strength of character. And his musical talent. She enjoyed the vitality and outgoingness and wit of her mother. Sandy even somewhat appreciated her mother's stubborn ways. Sandy came to see delightful combinations and expressions of these characteristics in her own children. There was, however, one ancestor she viewed through a darker lens. Sandy came to feel and to express real animosity towards Baboo, our grandfather. He was very smart, very outgoing, very funny, and very opinionated (read: "bigoted") and sometimes cruel in his rigidity. Two months ago in a quiet moment in Central Park I took the occasion to visit with her and the ancestors in my head. I channeled Baboo and Sandy's parents and my parents (with whom I had the kind of issues that Sandy had with Baboo.) and Sandy. In the stillness of that moment I came to understand that we - the cousins: Sandy, Bob, Jay, Gray, Mimi, Penny, John, Ned, and I - became the synthesis of the ancestors. We are the products of their lives and characters. But expressed very differently. With Sandy in particular, expressed with more humanity and compassion. And real concern for others. And I saw that this is a dynamic passed from one generation to another. Just consider Dwight, Dave, and Marsha. Just consider Dylan, Annika, Dehlia and Dalton. They get better and better with each generation. I wished I could share and explore this thought with Sandy. And I regretted that she would no longer understand. But she might have a year or so ago. Because family has always been important to her. And the thought might have pleased her. Family was the energy that animated Sandy. In many ways she was the glue that held us all together. Sandy was the link to our past and the bridge to our future.