Sandra Moore, artist and educator
Sandra Moore, 76, of Broadkill Beach, passed peacefully away Friday, Sept. 5, 2014, at the Delaware Hospice. She was born March 12, 1938, in Philadelphia, Pa., daughter of the late John E. Moore and Matilda Martha Moore.
Prior to relocation to their Broadkill Beach roundhouse, "Bliss," Ms. Moore was a teacher and interpreter for the deaf in Baltimore, Md., and Columbia, Md. Ms. Moore held a masters degree from Gallaudet University and a bachelors degree from Moore College of Art in art education.
She was an early advocate for total communication and established innovative systems of teaching involving arts integration. She established the first Captioned Movies for the Deaf series in Columbia and deaf awareness workshops at Howard Community College. Ms. Moore also taught sign language classes for undergraduate students at Towson University and Johns Hopkins University, as well as Howard Community College, teaching sign language to adults of all professions, including firefighters, doctors and dentists.
She was an on-stage fixture at the Columbia Festival of the Arts, interpreting for the performers and quite often performing with them. Not long after retirement, Ms. Moore continued to teach. She was hired as an outside contractor for the Cape Henlopen School District. She also started her involvement with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. As she continued to learn new techniques in painting with national and international artists she passed her learning along to her peers. She was also involved in organizing trips to The Barnes Collection, The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pa., The Visionary Arts Museum and The Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore.
Ms. Moore was an intrepid world traveller, touching many spots on the globe including Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Russia, The Netherlands, most of Western and Eastern Europe and many of the Caribbean Islands. Her favorite places; Budapest, Hungary, and London, England, she visited multiple times. Each of her trips resulted in paintings. Watercolors were painted in situ, many en plein air, and would act as her sketches for oil paintings painted later in her studio. Ms Moore was also a prolific photographer, taking multiple shots of scenery for reference for her larger detailed oils.
Her most studied single topic was Monhegan Island, Maine. Over many summers in the mid-1970s, she produced watercolors and oil paintings of every scenic outlook available on the island, from the cliffs of Burnthead to the great rusted hull of the shipwrecked SS Sheridan.
Her passion for discovery and learning never stopped. Her teaching others continued through her last days. She painted even when she was hospitalized at the end of her life, challenged with debilitating double vision.
Ms. Moore is survived by her husband, Frank Gerhardt; her daughter, Susannah Siger; and her daughter-in-law, Amanda Pellerin; her brother John E. Moore and sister-in-law Michelle Moore, their children and grandchildren; as well as many cousins and a huge family of friends.
A celebration of life will be held Saturday, Sept. 27, at 10 a.m., at Middletown Friends Meeting House, 453 W. Maple Ave., Langhorne, Pa. Interment will follow at Sunset Memorial Park, 333 W. County Line Road, Huntingdon, Pa. In lieu of flowers contributions may be made to: Tunnell Cancer Center, 18947 John J. Williams Hwy., Rehoboth Beach, DE 19971, or Delaware Hospice, 100 Patriots Way, Milford DE 19963, or Fox-Chase Cancer Center, 333 Cottman Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19111.
