Sandy Plickert

Sandy Plickert
Sandy Plickert passed on to eternal life on September 24, 2025, after a short but virulent illness. She was born in Port Chester, N.Y on Christmas Eve, 1935 to Robert and Betty Sullivan. She grew up in Dobbs Ferry, NY, graduated from high school there and was elected to the National Honor Society. Sandy attended Goucher College. She graduated cum laude with a degree in education and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
In her senior high school year, she volunteered at the American Field Service international student exchange organization in New York, where she met a young German Columbia University student – Hans J. Plickert. They were married in 1956. Sandy's post-graduate career started at the Yonkers, NY Society for the Protection of Children until her son, Eric, was born. The family first lived in Bronxville, NY, but moved to Greenwich, CT in 1963 when Sandy was pregnant with her daughter, Karyn. After being a full-time mother for a few years, Sandy became a teacher at and then coordinator of the Greenwich Family Center Child Care Program from 1970 to 1983, while going back to school to earn a Master's degree in Early Childhood Education at Bank Street College of Education. Subsequently, she was Director of the First Congregational Church Pre-School. In her Fifties, she made a 180-degree professional turn and became the program director at the Greenwich Senior Center (now the Wallace Center) and stayed there until retirement in 2001. Sandy was active on several Greenwich Public School and other town-wide organizations focusing on early childhood education and, later, on elder care. For more than four decades, she touched so many lives with her kindness, compassion, love, and a luminous smile.
Sandy loved to travel and was fortunate to be able not only to vacation abroad but also accompany her husband on some of his many business travels around the world, particularly after her retirement. She loved Paris and always looked forward to the biannual Paris Air Show. She also was an active Stephen's Minister at the First Congregational Church in Old Greenwich for many years. In retirement, she volunteered as a docent at the Bruce Museum. Her primary focus, however, was always her family. Summer vacations were in Nantucket for two decades, where she could indulge in her love of the ocean waves at a time when Nantucket was still a relatively quiet place. At home, summer mornings in retirement were spent peacefully at the Rocky Point Club in Old Greenwich. Music, Opera, and the Arts were part of her life as well.
Sandy is survived by her husband of 69 years, her son Eric (Sharon) of Leominster, MA and daughter Karyn Bristol (Steven), presently of Princeton, NJ, three now-grown grandchildren, a brother-in-law in Berlin, and her sister Julie Carder, as well as cousins and Julie's children and grandchildren.
Interment will be private with her family. A memorial service will take place at First Congregational Church in Old Greenwich on Saturday, November 8, 2025 at 11:00 a.m.
The family would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the staff of The Greens at Greenwich for their wonderful care of Sandy in the last 9 months of her life and the nurses and doctors of Greenwich Hospital, particularly those amazing professionals who cared for Sandy with compassion and kindness in her last couple of days.