Sandra Sue Strickland (Tant) of New Bern, NC 

December 9, 1938 - January 8, 2024 

Sandra Tant, beloved wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister, and friend to many, passed away on Monday, January 8, 2024, in New Bern. 

Born Sandra Sue Strickland in Middlesex, NC, to J.W. and Virginia, she grew up surrounded by her many loving aunts, uncles, and cousins. In these early years, they all lived with her very special grandmother, Tempie Strickland, fondly known as Mama Strickland.

She graduated from Needham Broughton High School in Raleigh in 1957 and went on to attend East Carolina Teachers’ College. During the summer breaks, she spent time on her uncle’s farm, where she met Harold, who was barning tobacco on his nearby family farm in Pine Ridge. They married in May of 1959.

After graduating with her bachelor’s degree in 1960 in Home Ec., she taught at Central School in New Bern, Cary High School, and for nearly 20 years at Craven Community College. It may come as a surprise to those who knew her, but she even coached basketball.

Sandra and Harold moved to New Bern in 1968, where she raised their three children: Susan, Lainey, and Tommy. She was a consummate homemaker and a fierce advocate for her kids.

As her children got older, Sandra accidentally reinvented herself as a wedding planner thanks to family friends who know who they are. This launched a bustling 20-year career that she thoroughly enjoyed and allowed her to touch many lives.

She did love to travel, or “go,” as Harold always said. There were trips to Alaska, New Zealand, Scotland, Hawaii, France, New York, and the list goes on. According to Sandra, she’s not so sure that Harold loved some of the trips as much as she did, “but at least he went.”

Sandra was one of a kind with a quintessential eye for design and detail. She loved to host and entertain and frequently did so in her home and yard that she and Harold lovingly, most of the time, created, nurtured, and tended for more than 50 years. There were cocktail parties, Christmas Eve parties, Hazen’s now legendary Christmas party, engagement parties, dinner parties, birthday parties, parties to celebrate the end of the upstairs being finished, parties in the backyard with the boat on the trailer parties, parties to plan parties parties, easter egg hunts, family reunions, high school field trip parties, come as you are parties, slumber parties, weddings, and most any event or reason that she could think of to throw a party. 

Sandra loved plants and flowers, growing, buying, planting, arranging, and having Harold move them all around the yard when she changed her mind.

In addition to her creativity and sense of style, Sandra was smart as a whip up until the end. She was an accomplished bridge player part of many great bridge clubs and traveling to competitive bridge events over the years. She could do math in her head like none other….fractions and all of the complicated stuff. And she did the daily Sudoku puzzles that Harold would cut out of the newspaper every day, fold them just so, and put the date at the top for her.

Her faith, determination, grace, and generosity will be her legacy. She lived and loved well and considered her family and friends as her greatest blessings. She loved her bible study, collecting and trying new recipes, shoes, beautiful clothes, nice restaurants, a good pinot grigio, crab cakes, Chris’ fried green tomatoes, fresh corn and butterbeans in the summer, the farmer’s market, shopping in unique little boutique shops, spending time with her grandchildren and great-grandchild, decorating, gift wrapping, flowers, her little design business, telling Harold and others what to do, making her famous ham biscuits that are legendary, and that we will all miss. And Sandra loved snow. As the story goes, it snowed on the day that she was born on December 9, 1938.

Above all, Sandra was a woman of great faith with profound and resolute belief in Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior.

She was Mama or Mom to some, Grandmama to others, and “GG” to her precious great -grandchild, Daizy.

Sandra is survived by her husband, Harold Tant of New Bern; son, Tommy Tant, and wife, Shannon of Raleigh; daughters, Susan Tant Ruiz of Raleigh and Lainey Tant of New York; grandchildren Hallie, Clark, and Kelli Tant, Coco and Henri Ruiz all of Raleigh; great-grandchild Daizy Dowden of Raleigh; and sister Cindy Liles of Willow Spring.

She is preceded in death by her parents and her beloved grandson, Tom Ruiz

Source of Obituary: Cotten Funeral Home, New Bern; DignityMemorial.com