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Letter from Margaret E. Williams,
Executive Director
of Friends of the Family, Inc. to her staff:
Dear Friends of the Family,
Last week we lost one of the greatest champions for children that Maryland has ever had, Sandy Skolnik, who died of lung cancer on Thanksgiving Eve, November 21, 2007. As many of you know, Sandy was the Executive Director of the Maryland Committee for Children for almost three decades and helped create Friends of the Family and the Family Support Center network in 1986. We owe our existence to her then and now – she was the mastermind of the consolidation of early childhood programs at the Maryland State Department of Education.
Sandy used her unique gifts in the service of children, especially young children. She realized long before most of us that child care for working families presents an opportunity to develop the social, emotional, intellectual, and physical abilities of young children. It is not simply day-long babysitting. She insisted that the provision of child care be recognized as a skilled profession and advocated subsidies and incentives to help child care workers – among the lowest paid of all categories of workers – receive the training and the pay they deserve. On the consumer side of the equation, Sandy promoted accessible, affordable, high quality child care available to all Maryland families. At the time of her death, she co-chaired the State’s Universal Pre-K Task Force and participated on the Birth-Through-Three Business Plan Leadership Council and all three of its work groups, continuing to be the voice for “what works” for children and parents.
Sandy’s great strengths included a love of and instinct for politics – the ability to figure out what could be done and how to accomplish it. She called it “the art of the possible.” As one of her dear friends (and one of ours too), Nancy Hall, once said to me, “Sandy sees the whole chessboard at once and has the game figured out after a few moves.” She was a master strategist, and I’ve never known anyone else who had that ability and used it ceaselessly to promote the interests of very young children. And surely one of Sandy’s greatest gifts to Friends of the Family was, indirectly, Senator Barbara Hoffman, Sandy’s great friend, who became the Legislature’s strong voice for little children and was the power behind the expansion of the Family Support Center network during a glittering two decades and expertly serves our cause still.
Dr. Nancy Grasmick, State Superintendent of Schools, spoke at Sandy’s funeral this past Sunday. She mentioned another of Sandy’s attributes: her credibility. You could rely on Sandy to know what she was talking about, whether she was discussing legislative strategy, permitted uses of federal Child Care Development Funds, the State’s budget, the history of child care in World War II, or nonprofit procurement in Maryland. Mike Riley of M&T Bank, current president of the Maryland Committee for Children’s Board, is fond of saying, “Sandy has forgotten more than all of us put together have ever known.”
When the term limit for Friends of the Family’s first Board members came around in 1992 (two consecutive three-year terms), founding executive director Rosalie Streett and I worked on presentations for each of the outgoing directors – Elaine Born, Frank Farrow, Terry Lansberg, Jan Rivitz, and Sandy. Playing on our Indian/pioneer theme, we chose Warrior Princess for Sandy (Rosalie as creative and on-target as usual!). For me, that title sums up what I shall miss most about Sandy – her strength of conviction, determination to succeed, willingness to engage, dignity of presence, personal beauty, and innate leadership.
In the coming weeks, Friends of the Family will work with the Maryland Committee for Children and others to find a suitable way to permanently memorialize Sandy’s accomplishments on behalf of all Marylanders and contributions to each of us. Realizing that the greatest tribute to Sandy may be to continue the work she led, many of us will be working together to figure out how to do that with her life our example and blessing.
Margaret
Margaret E. Williams
Executive Director
Friends of the Family, Inc.
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