Blossom Appel Sanger (1931-2025)

Submitted by the family

Blossom always remembered her 1952 commencement speaker who advised the Wellesley College graduates, rather than be housewives, to do something bold with their lives: “Ladies, there will always be more dust!” Blossom’s life exemplified this advice. We remember her as a trailblazer, as an active community member, as a trusted friend, and an unwaveringly supportive mother.

In her words, “Goodbye and Thank You to all my friends and relatives – near and far – who have touched my life with adventures, memories, love, laughter, and kindness.” She also advised, “Register to vote and always vote and get all your children to vote. Pay your taxes gratefully to this amazing crazy country we live in. Don’t waste your time hating anyone, please. It just sucks up your energy. Throw away that letter you just wrote to the editor.”

Blossom was born in Lynn, MA, to Doris and Bernard Appel. She said she laughed so much when she was born that the nurses came into the nursery to see which baby was laughing. She said, “I guess I never changed,” and that was the truth. She spent her childhood with her two sisters Lorna and Nancy, surrounded by art, music, medicine, and family. She graduated from Dana Hall School in 1948 and Wellesley College in 1952. After graduation, she faced the choice of going to either art school or medical school. Her mother had instilled in her the idea that women should have a profession—if only not to be left bereft once their children grew up and left home—so it was off to Tufts Medical School (to follow in her father’s footsteps), where she was one of only five women accepted in a class of 110. She recounts having to change into her scrubs in a broom closet as there were no women’s facilities, “it’s just what we had to do!”

Years later, as she sat in a movie theater watching the biopic about Ruth Bader Ginsberg with daughter Wendy (also one of very few women in her field), they shared a few choice stories about encounters they had along the way. Otherwise, she rarely spoke of any bias or obstacles faced in her chosen profession. Instead, she personified her motto, often said to her children and others who asked for advice…”Just do it!”

It was while at Tufts on an obstetrics rotation that she met George Sanger and married him shortly after. He loved to say, “I met Blossom at the Evangeline Hospital for Unwed Mothers!” He was her best friend, partner, and husband for 60 years, and they shared the same sense of humor, sense of purpose, and gusto for life. After graduating, she interned at Boston City Hospital where she felt she was exposed to the “real medicine” that Tufts had prepared her for. They then moved their new family to Ellsworth, Maine, with their first child, Wendy, where Blossom practiced general medicine, and George started his obstetrics and gynecology practice. Their son George Jr. was born soon after, and a few years later, in 1959, they loaded up a U-Haul, the two kids, and their Weimaraner dog (with Blossom pregnant with son Rick) and headed on a true adventure to start a new life in the West. They ended up on the Coronado Ferry and, gazing out on the water, knew they had found their future home.

Blossom soon took a job as the doctor at the Hotel del Coronado, sharing an office with George, taking calls from poolside and working with her kids nearby (son Dave arriving in 1961). One of her favorite memories from this time was when she and George were just setting up his obstetrics practice and she was getting the new office ready. She was cleaning the rug when his first patient arrived, saying “I’m here to see Dr. Sanger.” “That’s me,” she replied without thinking. The look on the patient’s face was priceless.

She worked at the hotel for five years until she went back for her residency in anesthesia. Studying under Dr. Gil Kinyon as the first anesthesia resident in San Diego, she learned her specialty and then went to work at Coronado Hospital. At that time, Coronado was very unusual in that of ten active medical staff, three were women. She practiced on the island for decades, including two stints as Chief of Staff, serving as a member of the Hospital Governing Board and on the San Diego Blood Bank Board before retiring in 1992.

While raising the four kids in Coronado, she tooled around town in her Thunderbird convertible, festooned with flower stickers, and a station wagon with a giant sticker of an American Bald Eagle on the side. When asked about the symbolism of the stickers, she would just reply, “They’re to cover the rust.” She taught the kids to love music by playing records of folk songs, blues, and comedy songs until they were memorized by the whole family. The result of her singing in the car, playing records, and playing her Gibson guitar was four children who played in the band and two who went on to have music careers. They knew she attended every performance throughout school because they could hear her unmistakable laugh in the audience.

After retirement, Blossom and George spent many wonderful years traveling to amazing places (she especially loved their trips to the Edinburgh Festival) and just sitting and reading on their porch overlooking San Diego Bay. She picked up where she left off after college and went on to have a successful career in art for the next ten years making digital “floral portraits” using her own flowers, showing and selling at numerous juried shows. She also spent two years collecting and collating a history from both sides of her family—all 180 living members—into books sent to all of them. She reconnected with many “lost” cousins, and it renewed her life in many ways. Blossom was very proud to have been a member of the Soroptimist International of Coronado for many years and was honored by that club as a “Legend” in 2007.

In a posthumous note, she says, “I leave behind my dear sister Nancy Baler and the Baler nieces, nephews, grand-niece and grand-nephew, my niece Dana Valentine (Walter) along with many wonderful cousins from my Appel and Leavitt families. My four children—Wendy McGuire (Dev), George Sanger Jr. (Cindy), Rick Sanger (Suzanne), and David Sanger (Elizabeth)—are flourishing, and have produced amazingly wonderful grand-children: Tara McGuire, Meghan Bancroft (Ed), Gwendolyn Sanger, Sandy Saxon (Waverly), Juno McQueen, Willow McQueen, Charlotte Sanger, and grand-children-in-law: Anjali Purkayastha (Josh), Danny Fischer (Claire), Micah Fischer (Amber), David Fischer (Dorothy), and Gabe Fischer-Barker (Malia)  and of course my great grandchild Sloane and my beloved great grandchildren-in-law: Noelle, Brooke, Milo, Cedric, and Lena. I also had the honor of sharing my life with former daughters-in-law Linda Law and Amy Cahill.”

She adds, “If you feel the urge, send some money to the Coronado Hospital Foundation designated to the Katy Green and Cathy McJannet Nursing Scholarship or to Soroptimist International of Coronado. And if you want to make me smile, take a lonesome friend out to dinner—have a good drink, toast to me, and tell a really funny, politically incorrect joke. And charge the dinner to me.”