Sandy West, the doyenne of Ossabaw Island off Georgia’s coast, needs your help.
She's 103, in poor health and wants to remain on the island she has fiercely protected — and plowed every penny of her once-considerable fortune into — until the end.
Sandy's plight, and wonderful history, was profiled in a recent Personal Journey in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her family bought the barrier island near Savannah in 1924 and Sandy has lived there for decades, keeping developers at bay, running an artist's colony and sponsoring environmental research.
Broke, she sold the 25,000-acre island to the state of Georgia in 1978 at a discount and plowed $4 million back in to Ossabaw. She's again without financial resources and needs tens of thousands of dollars to remain, with round-the-clock care, on Ossabaw.
A gofundme account has been set up for Sandy and an additional $20,000 has been raised since the AJC story ran two weeks ago. More is needed or else the grande dame of Georgia's coast must leave her island for a nursing home on the mainland.
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