Shortly after she remarried in 2001, Sandy Prince decided to quit her executive assistant job at a communications technology company to be a full-time mom to her newly blended family.
Her union with Ed Prince brought her two daughters, ages 18 and 6, under the same roof as her husband’s two sons, who were 13 and 10. Prince poured herself into full-time parenting — driving the kids to school, volunteering as room mother in their classrooms and coordinating fundraising for their extracurricular activities.
She became executive secretary and later president of the Chesney Elementary PTA, where her youngest daughter was enrolled, and doted on all the kids during frequent visits to the school. One especially memorable day, Mrs. Prince delighted the special needs children by bringing them a bag full of tennis balls with smiley faces printed on them and then staying to play.
“Either me or Sandy could walk up and down the halls anytime and the kids were like ‘oh, it’s Mrs. Prince and Mr. Ed,’” Ed Prince recalled. “They all knew who we were.”
Sandra Lynn Lovett Prince died Sept. 12 of pancreatic cancer in her home, with her husband and two daughters by her side. She was 51. An outdoor memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Thursday at Crowell Brothers Peachtree Chapel Funeral Home in Norcross.
Mrs. Prince was thrilled when her 29-year-old daughter, Jessica Bambarger, welcomed grandsons Jace and Jaxon. She and her husband transformed the backyard of their Duluth home into an adventure zone with revamped treehouse and a path to the creek so the boys would have a place to frolic.
“Whenever we could go get them, we’d scoop them up and we’d take them,” Ed Prince said.
Mrs. Prince was very health-conscious. She exercised routinely and prepared healthy meals. So was a surprise when doctors diagnosed her with breast cancer in 2010. She beat it through a lumpectomy and radiation treatments. But not long thereafter, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Toward the end of her life, Prince’s family closed ranks around her. Her 17-year-old daughter, Danielle, stopped attending high school and took courses at home so she could nurse her. Her husband also took leave from his job at Microsemi, which provided crucial financial support by paying his salary throughout the ordeal.
Her treasured six Pomeranian dogs seemed to sense the illness and sought to comfort her. Relatives even brought the dogs (one at a time, on a visitation schedule) to the hospital to cheer her.
Her friend, Leo Ayoub, of Lawrenceville, said Prince was unfailingly supportive and upbeat. She buoyed Ayoub during her own battle with breast cancer and drove her to radiation treatments.
“She kept telling me that life gives you bumps and you’ll pass them,” Ayoub said. “She said something good will come of it.”
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