Sandra Weller Love
- Published: September 6, 2024
Sandra Weller Love, writer, feminist, mother and wife, died peacefully on Aug. 31, 2024, at the age of 84, after struggling with COPD and dementia. She was an 18-year survivor of breast cancer and was a shining example of how to battle health adversities with determination and a strong spirit.
Sandy was born and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. Throughout her life, she was a children’s book author, a journalist, an editor, a university professor, a grant writer and avid gardener, and she had a strong affinity to being out in nature. She loved to walk in Glen Helen. Sandy was known for her unending energy and being able to handle multiple projects at home, work and for the community of Yellow Springs.
Sandy’s love of the water began with learning how to swim at age 4. She won her first swim competition at age 8, and she was hooked. She swam competitively and was on the Girls A team, one of the top four young women, in the famed Lakeside swim club in Louisville. One of her trophies came from winning the cross-river swim, an annual event in Louisville. It was a grueling, and dirty, race across 700 yards of the Ohio River. She competed in the Junior Olympics, won several high point trophies, and earned a few medals in an international competition with Cuban swimmers (that was possible in 1954). Sandy later went to Purdue University and swam under a former Olympic coach who was responsible for having one of the few women’s swim teams in the country. Sandy later continued to demonstrate her love of swimming by teaching swim lessons to children at Gaunt Park Pool in Yellow Springs.
Sandy also knew at a young age that she wanted to be a writer. She entered a short story contest in high school and was written up in the Courier-Journal as “the swimmer who writes.” After she published her first children’s book, she felt like things had come full circle as she was known as the writer who swims. She went on to publish three more children’s novels.
Sandy was a long-time resident of Yellow Springs. She came to live in the village in 1971, feeling that the slightly left-of-center and artsy Yellow Springs suited her. Sandy cherished the sense of community and wanted her young children to grow up in such a special space. She loved that the village was a place where most women worked, children got around easily by bike, and was full of artistic and musical people as well as imaginative houses and gardens.
Sandy found her place as a writer almost immediately in Yellow Springs. She was invited to be a part of the Tuesday night Writer’s Group of Yellow Springs. She combined her passion for writing and the community when she co-founded the Antioch Writers’ Workshop in 1986. She stayed involved by being the director, a faculty member and board member for many years.
She will be dearly missed by her husband of 49 years, Sam Young, and her children and their families, Lisa Love (Rick), Michael Young (Kelly), Ellen Stanley (Chris and Emma) and Lynda Highlander (Drake and Samantha). She was preceded in death by her father and mother, Carroll and Alma Weller.
A memorial service is planned for the future. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Yellow Springs Unitarian Fellowship in honor of Sandy Love.
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