Sandy’s legacy: College scholarship dedicated to memory of ‘light-hearted’ nurse

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY KATY BIGGS

Katy Biggs is proud of her grown grandsons, Mike and Brian, their wives, and the five great-grandchildren, above, who her daughter, Sandy Pete, didn’t get to meet. Pete died Feb. 19, 2000, after a six-year struggle with breast cancer.

Dalton graduate Makenna Geiser is the first recipient of the scholarship Katy Biggs has set up through the Wayne County Community Foundation in memory of her daughter, Sandy Pete.

 

DALTON To the people closest to her, Sandy Pete was special. Light-hearted, but deep. A devoted mother and daughter. A selfless caregiver. A strong, independent woman who bravely battled breast cancer in her 40s until she died in 2000.

Two decades after her death, Sandy’s mother, Katy Biggs hopes others will learn about the remarkable woman she was thanks to a scholarship awarded for the first time this year.

“Even though she was so outgoing about so many things, it was very difficult for her to talk about herself,” Biggs said.

Sandy lives on through her family and friends, especially her mother in Dalton, brother in Wooster, sons in Colorado and Florida – and the five grandchildren she didn’t meet. They tell her story lovingly to anyone willing to listen. The scholarship in her name is just another way to share her legacy with the community.

Read the complete story in the July 22, 2020 edition.