SANDY COLE
The middle daughter of Scottish immigrant parents, Bob (Scotty) and Marion Thomson, Sandy lived the first five years of her life in the apartment above the Green Lake Grocery with her family and Aunt Nan and Grandma. Adjacent was the gas station, Scotty's Super Service, run by her dad and his brother, Jim. Her sisters, Ann Marize and Chris were born sixteen months before and three years after her. Just before she started kindergarten, the family moved to a house they had built on the other side of Green Lake. Living on the lake reinforced her tomboyish tendencies and life revolved around swimming, hunting crawfish, fishing, and riding bikes to a nearby riding stable to feed carrots to the horses.
Elementary school years were spent at Scotch School where she had the same classmates throughout the years. By fourth grade she had decided she wanted to be a teacher. In seventh grade the class moved to Roosevelt School, where her old classmates were split into three classes and with them, she proceeded into West Bloomfield High School. When she was thirteen, the family spent the summer in Scotland, living with her Grandmother and Grandfather and hanging out with her cousins, Tezma and Brian. They toured the country for two weeks and went to London for a week. That trip helped to develop the love for travel that was to motivate her at various junctures of her life.
From there Sandy went to Eastern Michigan College, taught for two years in Pontiac, and applied to teach overseas for the Department of Defense in their Overseas Dependents' Schools. For five and a half years she taught fourth through sixth grade children at three different bases in Germany and two in England, traveling at every three day vacation and break, and going home summers to work on a Masters in Educational Psychology at Wayne State University. Near the end of this period, she married Bob Cole and they returned to his home in Massachusetts. She taught sixth grade for two years in Walpole MA, then 'retired'to have Christy and, six years later, Rob. During this period she went back to college and got a degree in Guidance and Counseling and a Certificate in Technical and Professional Writing. After 15 years in Medfield, MA, the family moved to New London, NH where Bob's family had had a cottage for years. Sandy went to work for the New Hampshire Community Technical College in Claremont, where she taught psychology. counseled students, and ran a grant funded project to help single parents attend college to better their familes' lives.
With her children grown and her marriage over, Sandy met Dick Daniels and after retiring,
moved to his house in North Sandwich,
where she could revert to her childhood passions of swimming in the pond and biking around the countryside.
Her passion for travel was also reawakened and the site here on Trips bears that out. She bought a house in North Carolina
after they researched warmer, but less crowded, southern areas where winter could be escaped.
Now she works on enhancing the house and yard with a lot of help from Dick.
They travel frequently but enjoy the woods of New Hampshire and the beaches of North Carolina when they're home.
Life is busy, interesting, and full of new adventures.