[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 214 (Thursday, December 18, 2025)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1223]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       REMEMBERING JANE SANDERSON

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. STEVE COHEN

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, December 18, 2025

  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to longtime 
Memphis society columnist and entertainment reporter Jane Sanderson, 
who passed on December 13, 2025, at the age of 100.
  Ms. Sanderson interviewed many of the biggest stars of the late 20th 
century as the society writer for The Commercial Appeal from 1950 to 
1958, when she had her first daughter. She then worked for The Delta 
Review, covering Southern culture, then returned to newspaper 
journalism in 1971 as an entertainment and lifestyles reporter at The 
Memphis Press-Scimitar until it closed down in 1983. After that, she 
was the Memphis-Nashville entertainment writer for People magazine. 
Among the bold-face names she interviewed and wrote about were 
comedians Jack Benny, Phyllis Diller, and Lucille Ball; movie stars 
Ginger Rogers, Audrey Hepburn, Burt Reynolds and Jack Nicholson; and 
Memphis music giants Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Isaac Hayes. 
Ms. Sanderson went to Memphis public schools and graduated from Central 
High School before attending the University of Alabama and graduating 
with a journalism degree in 1947. She married Robert Wright Sanderson, 
a gallery owner, who passed in 1999.
  I extend my condolences to her daughters, Laura Sanderson Healy and 
Lisa Sanderson, her two grandchildren, and her many admirers. She lived 
her life in the limelight, and will be missed.

                          ____________________