Sandra Marie Nailen

Family, faith, and lifelong friendships were the pillars of a life well lived by Sandra Marie Nailen. Sandy passed away Monday, March 25, 2024, in Ogden, Utah, where she and her late husband, John, found an unexpected and welcoming home for the last 38 years of her life after decades of moving every few years, the itinerant life of an Air Force couple.

Sandy was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, on October 12, 1936, and grew up there until leaving to attend the Grace New Haven School of Nursing. Nursing was not a surprising choice for a woman who dedicated her life to serving others but meeting a boy from a small town on the New York/Pennsylvania border and new to the Air Force was a twist.

After they married, they spent their lives making a home wherever the service sent them, from the South Dakota Badlands to the California coast, the beaches of Hawaii to tiny towns in the Midwest. At every stop, Sandy made new friends for life, people she stayed in touch with throughout the country to the very end through visits, letters, and phone calls. Sandy worked as a registered nurse at several stops, and she and John had three children along the way, always making sure to stay connected to their families in the East no matter what time zone they found themselves in.

Sandy survived polio as a child, and breast cancer diagnosed more than 30 years ago, as well as the loss of John in 2013. After settling in the mountains of Utah, Sandy dedicated her time to volunteering countless hours in the community, and at St. Joseph Catholic Church. She was a voracious reader, bowled in leagues well into her 70s, and supported live theater in Utah as a season-ticket holder for years. She loved the rock ’n’ roll of Elvis Presley, the opera of Luciano Pavarotti and the country of Don Williams and Willie Nelson. And she loved anything and everything about Hawaii: the music, the food, the beaches, the lifelong friendships made there. Taking her three grandsons to Hawaii was one of her fondest memories in her later years.

Sandy is survived by her daughter, Patricia (George) Maxwell; grandsons, Sean Maxwell and Cameron (Annie) Maxwell; her daughter, Mary Nailen; grandson, Tony Nailen; her son, Daniel Nailen and his partner, Heather Crandall; and granddaughter, Merle Creed.

Funeral Services and a Celebration of Life will be held Friday, June 21, 2024, at 10 a.m. at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Ogden, Utah. In lieu of flowers, the family requests a charitable donation to Youth Futures Utah, an organization that provides emergency shelter and services for teenagers in crisis. Find them at youthfuturesutah.org.