Judith Opert Sandler

Things Judi loved: a fresh baguette, jazz vocals, public radio, the color navy blue, accomplishing anything always, adventurous travel, the right to choose, smart political commentary, better political progress.

Things Judi hated: rules, religion, garlic, the color pink, toothless liberalism, inaction, wasting time, systemic inequality, the arc of justice bending away from progress, lack of sufficient research support for rare blood cancers.

Judith Lynne Opert was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. In her childhood, her father Sam, whose family had fled Poland's pogroms, loaded the family up into the car and drove to the Jim Crow South to show his kids the truth of a country different from the community they knew. The impulse to confront injustice would define the rest of Judi's life. Judi graduated from the Bancroft School in 1962, followed by undergraduate studies at Boston University and a master's degree from Boston College, as well as a formative stint in the inaugural class of the National Teacher Corps -- years embroidered with cross-country road trips, ski-bum winters, and her brothers' adventures in auto racing.

In her twenties, Judi joined the New England Home for Little Wanderers, where she brought radical new curricula and creative classroom techniques to work with kids with special needs. There she met a handsome care worker named James Sandler, on hiatus from law school. Jim fell in love with the dark-haired, blue-eyed renegade. They married and drove Judi's BMW - she'd co-founded the BMW Car Club of America - to Alaska, camping with their German shepherd-malamute, Thor.

Judi began working at EDCO, creating opportunities for collaboration and reform across thirty school systems in the Greater Boston area, in all subject fields, as well as special education. At EDCO she developed a bold teacher training initiative around the new availability of personal computers, bringing technology into a vast number of area schools. EDC, the Education Development Center, became Judi's next professional home, where she'd stay for the remainder of her long career, and where, with an extraordinary staff, she led a stunning number of initiatives in science education reform and curriculum development.

Collaboration, systemic reform, and problem-solving: those were Judi's superpowers and the concepts she brought to every project she instigated. She founded and led the Center for Urban Science Education Reform, creating networks between educators, superintendents, and coordinators in twenty-five cities to learn about STEM education from experts and each other. Then she developed the National Dissemination Center, pairing rural schools with area universities to create hubs for training teachers in science. The State Systemic Schools initiative established a network in every state for educators to discuss their needs and find solutions together. Judi was a founder of the STEM Education Coalition to bring hundreds of National Science Foundation-funded agencies to come together to help Congress understand the need for STEM ed, and the need to fund it. She also was on the education committee for Barack Obama's 2008 campaign.

That year began her work -- alongside Jim -- dedicated to voter protection on behalf of Democrats, first in Florida, and then in Wisconsin and Georgia. The first weekend they worked with Stacey Abrams' office, Judi and Jim each called one-thousand voters who had been kicked off the rolls. They went on to work with Fair Fight, and to train voter protection workers in swing states. Their apartment near Harvard Square, where they lived together for over fifty years, and their house in Chilmark, where they spent much of the past three decades, were their year-round democracy-preservation bureaus.

When they weren't home, Judi and Jim explored the world together: some favorite travels included Bhutan, Myanmar, Tanzania, China, Japan, Chile, and many visits to Italy and France. After a trip to Cambodia, Judi and Jim, founded a rural school with computer access for every student. During this past year, Judi's sixth with blood cancer, they voyaged around the South Pacific, and just before her final decline, spent weeks exploring Paris, London, Dublin, and Edinburgh. Truly partners in adventure, in political action, and in every aspect of daily life, fifty-four years of marriage between best friends has been a love story for the ages.

In addition to Jim, Judi leaves their daughter Lauren, Lauren's husband Justin Lane, who Judi loved as her own son, and their child Sam, the ultimate apple of Judi's eye. We have no current plans for a memorial.

We urge you help address the under-funding of research to address the cancer that took Judi away far too soon -- far more important than sending flowers. Please consider donating in her honor to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute by phone at 1-800-525-4669 or dana-farber.org/give, where all support in her honor will go to help cure MDS, Myelodysplastic Syndrome.



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