Sandra Louise Siler

Sandra M. Siler, of New York, NY and Brookline, MA, passed away on July 30, 2026, at age 91. She’s survived by daughter Juliet (Eastland), son-in-law Craig, beloved grandchildren Ivy and Jack, and the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of her late sister Judy. She was predeceased by her husband of almost 50 years, Arthur, and her son Tommy, who died in 1975.

Sandy graduated from U. Chicago ’54, Barnard ’56, and Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons Medical School ’60 (one of just a few women in her class), and went on to a long career in psychiatry. But her most cherished educational experience remained her years at the High School of Music & Art (now LaGuardia HS), where she made lifelong friends.

Sandy came from a line of strong women: great-grandmother Leah, who got the family out of Ukraine; grandmother Jennie, a rock for Sandy after her father’s death; mother Blanche, a leader in Pioneer Women; and older sister Judy, a lifelong activist. (As a young girl, Sandy attended a Yiddish-speaking Socialist Zionist camp, but when she was 11, Judy “took over her political education” and decreed that she should go to Pete Seeger’s Camp Woodland.) Sandy’s father, also a doctor, died when she was four, and it was her lifelong regret that she never knew him better.

She was a brilliant, witty trailblazer; a feminist from day one; and a supremely cultured person – an opera aficionado, art lover, and voracious reader (all of Trollope? twice?!), who passed on her love of Dickens and S.J. Perelman to her daughter. She will join her husband and son at Mt. Auburn Cemetery, where interment will be private. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in her honor to The Jimmy Fund.