Obituary: A woman of joy and community

Sandra Bogart was known for her love of life. PHOTO/JOHN STONE

Sandra Kay Bogart, September 21, 1952 — October 13, 2015

Belly dancer, gardener, hedonist, writer, ukulele player, Northern Advocate columnist, entertainer, community champion - Northland lost all those and more with the death last week of Sandra Kay Bogart.

Sandra was born in the US town of Calexico on the California-Mexico border. She grew up with two younger brothers in the mostly Spanish-speaking town but was sent to boarding school at the age of 15 by her father, a seafood importer, who worried about her falling in with the wrong crowd.

She excelled at Bishop's School and was accepted by the University of Oregon in 1970, later transferring to the University of California at Berkeley.

Those were heady days of Vietnam War protests and the flower power movement but that didn't stop her gaining a BSc in food, nutrition and dietetics.

She was hired as head dietician at Mercy Hospital in San Diego, working with the elderly and heart attack patients.

Later she completed post-graduate studies in physical education at San Diego State University.

It was during her time at San Diego, thanks to a Moroccan restaurant she frequented, that her life-long love of belly-dancing began.

In typical Sandra fashion she decided she would become a belly-dancer and devoted herself to learning all she could about the Middle Eastern art-form.

Later she set herself up as a belly-dancing teacher, unleashing her troupe - The Baklava Dancers, which she always introduced as "sweet and nutty", like the dessert - on an unsuspecting Northland.

Many of her students said the sensuous, exotic dance helped them discover their femininity and self-esteem.

Sandra in her natural environment, a sparkly belly-dancing costume. PICTURE / SUPPLIED

Sandra's New Zealand connection began when she met Knox Grant and his sister Helen during a holiday in Fiji. She visited Knox soon afterwards and fell in love with all things Kiwi.

They married in 1984 and lived in Wellington until Knox's business took them to California. Sandra loathed the materialism of Orange County and sought refuge in a horticulture degree, starting another of her passions.

She gardened commercially and at home for the rest of her life, especially in the Glorious Tangle, the name she gave the orchard/garden she created in Waipu.

Later Knox's business interests took them to Chile and South Carolina, where the marriage foundered.

Sandra returned alone to Auckland and moved in next door to Helen, her architect husband Alistair and their young children. Her "out-laws", as she called them, were to become as close as her own family.

She bought her land overlooking Waipu Cove in the 1990s and asked Alistair to design a home. There, like the ancient pohutukawa that border the property, she finally put down roots.

Sandra's home hosted an endless succession of friends, Wwoofers and travellers from every corner of the globe. She loved entertaining, parties and telling a good story. Becoming a stand-up comic may have been her only unrealised ambition.

A concert by the Wellington Ukulele Orchestra in 2007 sparked another of her great passions. She found a tutor, practised furiously and started her own ukulele band, the Flaming Ukes.

But there was a serious Sandra too. She set herself up as a freelance writer, filing stories for the Calexico Chronicle, Mangawhai Focus and The Northern Advocate. Her Bream Bay Community Spirit column recorded local events every Thursday from 2005-15, stopping only when she became ill.

She also worked as a Fire Service media officer from 2008-11.

Her volunteer roles included helping organise Whangarei Garden Discovery and supporting the NZ Fairy Tern Charitable Trust, the Northland branch of the NZ Society of Authors, Civil Defence and Leukaemia and Blood Cancer NZ.

Sandra met Sheryl Mai, now Mayor of Whangarei, when Sheryl was managing a Whangarei garden centre. Sandra walked in one day looking for plants, then asked for a job.

She turned out to be an excellent employee and the pair became close friends.

She met Hans Holtmann, a fruit tree supplier, through the garden centre and started a sometimes tumultuous relationship. He died tragically when the mast of his yacht struck power lines.

Though they were no longer a couple, Hans' death left her heartbroken.

In 2005 she had a brief marriage to Greg Abbiss; three years ago she found love again, thanks to the match-making skills of Reva Meredith of Reva's Restaurant.

Sandra and Mark Davy had planned, as he described it, to "grow old disgracefully" together. Instead he supported her "brave and dignified battle" with acute myeloid leukaemia.

Sandra's shock diagnosis came in April when she went to her GP with a sore back. Her response to chemotherapy was promising and she was a week away from a stem cell transplant, her best hope of a full recovery, when the illness returned.

She had time - just - to plan her funeral at Waipu's Celtic Barn last Saturday, from the celebrant's iridescent green fairy outfit to the wicker coffin and the all-women pallbearers (Sarah, her tenant turned "Northland daughter", was unable to travel so her husband took her place).

The Flaming Ukes and her favourite band, The Nukes, performed, as did the Baklava Dancers. One of her former students told the 300 people at the service that Sandra embodied everything belly-dancing stands for: "Joy, grace, community and all things sparkly and fabulous".

The speakers included Waipu fire chief Trevor Vaile, who recalled how she started as brigade photographer and ended up chief publicity officer for the Fire Service in Northland.

Ironically her biggest contribution to the brigade was her support for the firefighters' fundraising efforts in the Sky Tower Challenge for research into leukaemia - the very thing that took her life.

Waipu firefighters Janine Roberts, left, and Laura Andrews visited Sandra in Auckland Hospital ahead of the 2015 Sky Tower Challenge. PHOTO / LEUKAEMIA AND BLOOD CANCER NZ

It was typical of Sandra that when firefighters visited her in hospital to see how the brigade could help, she ended up helping the brigade instead by using her networks to raise another $1000 for their cause.

Sandra's final journey from the Celtic Barn summed up the richness and variety of her life. Opera North sang Amazing Grace, Waipu Fire Brigade formed a guard of honour, her favourite women carried her wicker casket, and her belly-dancers performed the zaghareed, a high-pitched call of honour or celebration.

As her self-chosen epitaph says, "She had the best time every time she could".

- by Peter de Graaf, based on the eulogy by Sheryl Mai.