[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 70 (Wednesday, April 26, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Page S1379]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      REMEMBERING SANDY BALDONADO

 Mr. PADILLA. Madam President, I rise today to celebrate the 
life of Sandra Nash Baldonado, the former mayor of Claremont, CA, and a 
beloved community leader.
  During an intrepid lifetime of service and generosity, any number of 
friends across the country will remember her knocking doors in Southern 
California with her kids by her side, serving our Nation at the C.I.A. 
in Washington, organizing Lady Bird Johnson's campaign tour through the 
South in the 1960s, or forging ahead to find a permanent home for the 
Claremont Lewis Museum of Art to bring life to the town she loved most.
  Born in Shanghai in 1935, Sandy had a very international childhood, 
with her family living everywhere from Canada and Mexico to New York 
City. She attended Smith College, where she earned her undergraduate 
degree in economics, her first stop in a lifelong quest for knowledge 
that would lead her to earn her master's degree in education from 
Claremont Graduate School and her law degree from Whittier School of 
Law.
  In 1959, after marrying her first husband Arthur Baldonado, the 
couple moved to Southern California where they would eventually make 
their home, raise four children, and start their new lives. As a point 
of personal privilege, it is not lost on me that only in the time since 
Sandy followed her then Brooklyn Dodgers out west have the Dodgers 
become one of the most successful franchises in professional sports, 
with six of their seven World Series titles coming since 1959.
  In 1992, Sandy married her late husband George Hart, with whom she 
traveled the world.
  Across her long and accomplished career, Sandy served as a sixth-
grade teacher, president of the League of Women Voters, member of the 
Three Valley Municipal Water District's Board of Directors, vice chair 
of the California Democratic Party, family lawyer, city council member 
and later mayor of the city of Claremont, and president of the 
Claremont Museum of Art.
  In every role she held, whether teaching sixth graders or 
representing women and children in family law, the people and 
communities around her were made better because of her boundless 
capacity to care.
  My thoughts are with all those she now leaves behind, including her 
children and their spouses Charles and Michele Baldonado, James 
Baldonado, Andrew and Susan Baldonado, and Liana and Ezra Bayles; as 
well as her grandchildren Caroline, Pauline, Alex, Grace, Charlie, and 
Selina.

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