23. februar 2023 Sandra Walks On

Sandra (Reynolds) Ellgaard 1940-2023

    My youngest sister Sandra Jean (Reynolds) Ellgaard of Metairie, Louisiana, died, unexpectedly, on February 20, this year. The news caught us by surprise that morning and has evaded my consciousness although it surfaces now and then in gasps; suppressed by pauses of contemplation of this keyboard I write upon, or the start-up of the furnace, or closing of an upstairs cupboard door. I’m just not there yet.

    Sandra was the youngest daughter of Guy and Violet Reynolds. Born August 3rd, 1940, in Des Moines, Iowa, she was nine years younger than her sister Virgina (Ginger) [Wilson] (1932-2009), and eleven years younger than her sister, Ann Marie [Baldner] born on May 19, 1930 and going on 93 come May.

Me and the girls in Des Moines in 2010. Ann Marie, Ginger, Sandra

     Sandra had the world by the tail until I was born, eleven years later in 1951; an event that she wasn’t at all pleased about. “One minute you weren’t there, the next minute you were. Wha?” (Or words to that effect.)

    My earliest memory of her was a sharp rebuke when she was about sixteen, I think. I may have teased her at a sensitive moment, and she made it plain that she didn’t appreciate it one bit. (You know how girls can be ...) I don’t recall the aftermath nor do I bear any physical scars that I could reference long afterward. As significant as it was for me, I found it odd she did not recall it at all these recent years.

    It was soon after high school she began nurses training at Lutheran Hospital in Des Moines, and moved out of the house, (making me an only child). Sandra was no doubt delighted.

    I remember Sandra’s nursing school days when she would bring college friends home for the weekend; maybe to get some laundry done, or just enjoy some of our mother’s good cooking. I think this was when Sandra started bringing home issues of MAD Magazine; whose worn-out and dog-eared copies were enjoyed by myself and all of our nieces and nephews for years afterwards, warping their minds and imaginations. Thankfully, those magazines had no lasting effect on me.

    After she became a Registered Nurse, she and Erik were married. They moved to Iowa City where Erik attended the University of Iowa and they started a family. Over the course of studies there, she gave me loads of college textbooks and paperbacks; Erik gave me 3 white rats, a horseshoe crab, and other great things for elementary school Show & Tell that I have forgotten in the past 60-some years.

    Life swept us to different parts of the country, me to far northwest Minnesota in 1979. Sandra, Erik, their two daughters and a son were in Metairie, Louisiana where Professor ‘Dr. Erik G. Ellgaard’ began teaching Cell and Molecular Biology at Tulane. Ginger, Jim and their two daughters lived in Des Moines. Ann Marie, Clair and their two daughters and two sons lived on a farm outside of Dallas Center,  Iowa. 

Sandra and her family would swing through Des Moines to visit Mom, Dad and I; Erik’s folks, his sister, husband and two daughters who lived in Des Moines too. Often they would be on their way to Half Moon Lake where Erik’s father had purchased a lake cabin near Miltown, Wisconsin. Over time, as the Ellgaard family grew, they purchased building lots aside their parent’s cabin, and expanded their footprint in Wisconsin, building a place for future generations to gather in the summers.

Sandra and grandson 'Erik' along Mardi Gras Parade route

     My visits with Sandra were rare as I was never a fan of big cities, crowded streets, traffic, pandemonium. I never visited her family in New Orleans until I went to Louisiana in May of 2000, with Palmville neighbor and friend Jerry Solom on one of his homebuilt Indian Summer sailboat prep trips, prior to his big sail to Norway in 2000. 

    We called Sandra quite out-of-the blue, surprised (read, ‘shocked’) her with the news I was in town, unexpectedly, wondering about the possibility of a quick meeting; no intent to stay long, when she invited us all over to eat. It became the first time I had ever eaten crayfish or even came to know they were eatable; a memorable treat for me, Jerry and two other guys with us.

    A few months later, Chairman Joe, his sons Ned, and Joey, and I stopped at Half Moon Lake, on a road trip, in a car that Joe had purchased from his father near Boston. It was another one of those unexpected ‘just-drop-in’ occasions that I gave her no warning about. She welcomed us again -- like we were related or something.

    Email improved communications in the later years, so did cellphones and text messages. Her long solo summers at the lake, after Erik walked on, gave rise to Jackie and I swinging through there on occasion on our trips home from visiting family in Bayfield, Wisconsin, although it was somewhat out of our way.

    We’d catch a meal somewhere or would eat in, spending the night, catching up on news and family; then head back north toward home.
Sandra and Jackie, only four years apart in age; Sandra, the elder, corresponded through Facebook for years as mothers and sisters-in-law, sharing stories of their lives; their experiences raising children, and spoiling grandchildren; spending time among distant family, too far in-between. Sandra, and her two sisters, and Clair came north to a Palm Family Reunion in about 2017. Then Covid came and really stretched our distances apart.

    Her death was untimely; her absence will be felt by all who loved her. But I’ll ‘see’ her again somewhere, likely unexpectedly; can’t break tradition now.