Sandra Jean Wood

Sauni Colman Wood, an educator, feminist, writer, storyteller, community leader, singer, dancer, world traveler, died January 16 in hospice care in Atlanta, Ga. She was 90.

Sauni accomplished so many things in her long life, but what she most cared that others knew about her was that she loved her family and friends.

Indeed, all of her children knew in their bones that each one of them was her favorite. The same could be said of her brothers, their partners, their children, her own grandchildren, her extended family, and her friends.

She was a joyful and generous lover of others, including all the children in schools and libraries who had the good fortune to listen as she, with her magic bag, told and enacted stories for them.

She was the daughter, sister, and wife of Presbyterian ministers, who spent her life both anchored in spirit and critical of cant and dogma. In the end, she preferred to attend Quaker meetings.

"Discussions around the dinner table sometimes got a little dicey," she remembered of growing up in a minister's home. "It was hardly possible for me to sit back and just listen. But along the way I became more accepting of people's differences of opinion, and at some point (that's why) I joined the Quaker community, where there was such openness."

Sauni was born Sandra Jean Colman in Catasauqua, Pa., to Samuel and Anna Colman. She was the middle child among four brothers. Her father insisted that "Sandra" was pronounced with a soft a, and "Saundra" eventually became Sauni, which stuck.

When she was five, the family moved across state to Tarentum, and when she was 12, to Binghamton, NY. Each move took the growing family to larger churches.

At Westminster College, she met and later married Kenneth Neal Wood, her life-long love and companion, until his death in 2013. The two moved from Westminster in New Wilmington, Pa, to Princeton, NJ, then to Williamsport, Pa; Orchard Park, NY; Lansing, Mich; Columbus, Ohio; and finally, Davidson, NC., where they lived for forty years. Along the way they had four children. In the end, Davidson was her hometown.

She spent the last ten years in Black Mountain, NC, and finally Decatur, Ga.

Sauni earned a master's degree in early childhood development and went on to direct a day care center in East Lansing, a Head Start program in Columbus, and a community center in Davidson.

For a decade she directed the program in early childhood development at Central Piedmont Community College. She then taught human development at UNC Charlotte and served as a consultant for day care centers in the region.

She hosted a public TV program on child development, interviewing advocates, thinkers, and educators.

She was a long-time hospice volunteer, actor in community theater (she was a singing nun in a local production of The Sound of Music), long-distance runner, lap swimmer, inveterate hiker, quilter, and knitter. One of the creative anchors in her life was a women's writing group. She worked with others in Davidson to develop models for aging in place. In retirement, she and Ken volunteered at state and national parks and house-sat at homes overseas, enabling them to travel and work in other parts of the world.

She made it clear to family and friends that the two core principles in her life were service and learning.

In 1982, son Scot Wood died in a deep-sea diving accident, which for Sauni felt like the end of the world. Yet she worked conscientiously with her grief, learned from it, learned that it never really goes away, and went on to write a children's book about loss and grief called Mama Mockingbird, about a mother mockingbird who loses a child and goes on a journey of self-discovery.

Sauni's children remember that she was always curious about their lives, asking questions, listening more than telling. Her friends knew this about her as well - she cared about others enough always to want to know how they were doing.

"Tell me, what are you reading?" she would say. "What are you thinking about these days."

On her death bed she asked those who were sitting with her what they were learning from the experience. And she laughed like a mother when they said they were learning they could still stay up all night.

She loved to sit at the piano with family and friends and sing folk songs and Broadway tunes. And if there was no piano, she'd whip out a dulcimer or guitar.

She loved to make soup and bake whole wheat bread, and the house smelled of it, as it also smelled of wood fires in the stove. She was a master pie maker, and pies became the family's preferred birthday dessert.

She would do anything for her children and grandchildren, and one way she let them know this was showing up for all sorts of events - even if it meant traveling across country or halfway around the world.

She never told others what to do or think, but embraced and celebrated what they came up with on their own. If someone wasn't in the room, she asked about them. She spoke of her children's partners as daughters- or sons- "in-love," rather than in-laws.

She loved to dance. She loved to sing. She loved a good festival. She loved to be with those she loved.

Sauni is survived by children, John Wood and wife, Carol Young Wood, of Asheville, NC; Melinda Wood and husband, Irvin Wardlow, of Decatur, Ga; Peter Wood and wife, Patricia Sierra, of Coral Gables, Fla; grandchildren, Scot Salomon Wood and Esteban Nathanael Wood of Miami, Fla; Rosa Wardlow of Atlanta, Ga; brothers Samuel Colman of Binghamton, NY, and David Colman and husband, David Clark, of Middlebury, Vt, along with many loving nieces and nephews.

A memorial is planned at a later date in Spring. The family suggests honoring Sauni's memory with a donation to a local hospice or library or by taking a walk or singing a song.