Sandra Kay Whitman, 83, of Brazil, Indiana, passed away peacefully after a long decline on Thursday, September 7, 2023, at Hutsonwood Nursing Home in Brazil.
Sandra was born on October 22, 1939, in Brazil, Indiana, the eldest child of Dudley W. and Mary M. (Elder) Whitman. She attended Brazil High School and graduated in 1957 from Paul C. Schulte Catholic High School in Terre Haute, Indiana. In 1965, Sandra received a Bachelor’s degree in English from Marian College in Indianapolis, Indiana. During her college years, she deepened and explored her Catholic faith, its demand for social justice and civil rights, and its call to a contemplative life. While taking several years off from college, she moved to Chicago, during which time she worked at the Blessed (now Saint) Martin de Porres settlement house, joined a lay Catholic order devoted to providing activities and support for families on the westside of Chicago, the Martin de Porres Workers, and taught at a Catholic grammar and middle school. At the end of this sojourn, she entered a Carmelite Monastery, one of several she would enter throughout her life, although the world called her back to service and study before taking her final vows each time. After returning to finish her final two years at Marian, Sandra heeded the call of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. following the events of the Bloody Sunday attempt to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. In March 1965, she traveled with several classmates to participate in the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
Following college, Sandra taught impoverished children and adults in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, a historic Black community founded during Reconstruction, as part of President Johnson’s War on Poverty under the federal Office of Economic Opportunity. She later moved to New Hampshire to again enter the novitiate of a Carmelite Monastery. Eventually, her intellectual restlessness returned her to Marian College, where she served as Director of Women’s Residences, and on to pursue a Master of Social Work degree at Indiana University’s Graduate School of Social Work, from which she graduated salutatorian in 1972. She worked for several years as a psychiatric social worker at the IU Medical Center in Indianapolis.
In the decades following the end of her formal education, she continued her journey. In 1975, she gave birth to a son, to whom she was devoted throughout her life and to whom she imparted some, but not all, of her best qualities. She again worked for a time in Chicago, then taught at St. Mary of Plains College in Dodge City, Kansas. Returning to Brazil in the 1980s, she tutored middle-school and high school students for over a decade and fulfilled a dream of running a bookstore. Aside from her faith, books were her constant companions. She was a member of Annunciation Catholic Church and, after moving to Terre Haute, St. Benedict’s Catholic Church, where she was active in its choir.
Sandra’s voice, humor, laughter, enthusiasm, love, curiosity, courage, and strength of mind will be dearly missed.
Sandra was preceded in death by her parents; a brother, Dr. Dudley W. Whitman Jr., and a sister, Joyce A. Fields.
She is survived by her son, Paul-Jon E. Benson (Tara Staver), and granddaughter, Isadora, of Washington, DC; siblings: Dr. Michael E. Whitman (Linda Smith) of Brazil, IN; Katherine I. Pell of Petersburg, IN; Jeanne M. Gianfagna (John) of Lake Worth, FL; Susan J. Rollings (Melvin) of Brazil, IN; and Tedra J. Butler (Steven) of Findlay, OH; and sister-in-law Margaret Whitman.
She also leaves behind numerous nieces and nephews, extended family members, and friends.
Visitation will be held at French’s Funeral Home in Brazil on Saturday, September 16, 2023, from 11am until 1pm. Mass of Christian Burial will be held at Annunciation Catholic Church at 1:30pm to be followed by burial next to her parents at Restlawn Cemetery in Brazil.
Visit www.frenchfuneralhome.com to light a candle in her memory.