Gregarious, hail-fellow-well-met, he was a three-letter athlete and student government president at Mountain Lakes (N.J.) High School. At Princeton Sandy prepared for medicine while majoring in English, writing his thesis on E.M. Forster. He roomed with Bennett, Capen, Cotter, Oakes, and Volckhausen. Active in Orange Key and in interclub sports at Cap and Gown, Sandy managed to spend most of his free time in Michigan wooing Judy Coburn, his childhood “girl next door,” whom he married in July 1959.
After medical school at Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and interning at Minneapolis General, Sandy talked the Army into sending him to France for two years of military service, leading to a lifetime as an oenophile and Francophile. A further internship at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital followed before Sandy settled in Kalamazoo, Mich., for 30 years as a general surgeon, first in a solo practice and then with two partners at Kalamazoo Surgery. He was an assistant professor at Michigan State’s College of Human Medicine, a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and author of several surgical treatises.
A Princeton Tiger first, Sandy loved Michigan football, a meticulous approach to the grill, tennis, vacations in Ixtapa, and his Lake Michigan retirement retreat. Sandy lost Judy in 2005. The class extends its condolences to his family, especially daughter Jenny ’85; son Chip; and brothers Chris and Garry.