Sarah Whitehead

Sarah Turner Whitehead, 50, died at her parents' home on May 30, 2019, from complications of Type 1 diabetes.

After doing social work in Boston in the early 1990s, Sarah spent most of the next 25 years living and working in Washington, DC. As a staff member of the Children's Defense Fund she helped to organize the first in what became a series of annual events, CDF's Stand for Children. She later served as the communications director for AIDS Action.

For more than a decade, as a writer and editor and communications strategist, she worked as a consultant to the United States Agency for International Development on its effort to address HIV-AIDS and on its Feed the Future initiative.

Born in Chicago, Illinois on May 6, 1969, she spent most of her growing-up years in the Pioneer Valley. She had a happy childhood in Northampton where she attended the public schools and participated in a variety of community activities: swimming at the Y; attending afterschool programs at the People's Institute; acting in plays at the Pines Theater. She gained a lifelong love of languages from her introduction to French at the Bridge Street School.

After graduating from Amherst Regional High School in 1987, she attended at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. A recipient of a Chancellor's Talent Scholarship in theater, she graduated in 1992 with a minor in theater and a major in human services.

She leaves behind her parents, Ralph and Barbara Whitehead of Northampton; her sister Ann Whitehead of Paris, France (Frank Scherz); brother John Whitehead (Rachel Calvin) and nephew Alex of Baltimore; loving aunts, uncles and cousins; and Tone Nunes and his husband Fred Hawck of South Hadley, whose friendship sustained her over many years and especially in recent times.

Her family would like to thank Dr. Peter Elsea and Dr. Kinga Pluta of the Cooley Dickinson Medical Group, the Wound Care Center team at Holyoke Medical Center, Dr. Mohammed Kamel and Hampshire County Dialysis Center, and VNA nurses, physical therapists, and hospice for their care over the past two years.

Her large extended family will gather privately to remember her life.