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Vol. 22, No. 3/Spring 2000

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Congratulations to the Winner of the Kwapil Award

Sandra HallSandra Kimberley Hall is a native of Sydney, Australia. Sandy describes herself as a sandwich child; the middle child of five, with twins above and twins below her.

Sandy left Oz (her fond nickname for Australia) as a newlywed, and lived in Tucson, Arizona for 23 years. She graduated from University of Arizona with two masters degrees in school librarianship and librarianship, which helped launch many surprising and different careers. These included a decade as librarian at the Arizona Daily Star; political consulting; law firm management, and public relations executive.

Whenever people ask Sandy which is her favorite career, she always says, "the next one."  Her career changes were based on her husband's relocations and alien laws in force in the 1970s.

After a long marriage, Sandy says she "recently escaped and am living as a single person for the first time in my life. I've been living in Hawaii for about 10 years."

Sandy is a full-time writer of biography, travel, and adventure, and has a book proposal circulating. "It's on "love," a subject I'm fascinated by." When money gets scarce, she substitute teaches at a prep school (English, Latin, History). She said, "That's the only time I feel my age. So I pop extra vitamins and gingko biloba."

Sandy has two children - Andrew, who attended the Denver conference in utero in 1976, and the NY conference in 1977 at age 10 months, and Kate who attended Kansas City, in 1978 at age 3 weeks.

Her hobbies include reading, mainly biography, and nonfiction, and mysteries by women writers, including library school classmate, JJ Jance; foreign movies; adventure travel; postcard collecting. Sandy's beloved cats, dogs, and other pets are in the big library in the sky.

It would be a mistake to think Sandy has no serious side. She  believes we should give back and so is planning a move - in a couple of years - to Nepal to live and work.  

Sandy considers herself a very blessed person, and at least once a day, meditates on the word aloha. She does a little centering exercise called the aloha alphabet. Aloha, she says, means, love, welcome, good-bye, and caring. It is a very special word, because it is based on "ha" meaning breath.

This is what came immediately to Sandy's mind:

 A is for the aloha Sandy feels for news library buddies
 L is for all libraries, past, present and future and the way they are the memory of a civilization
 O is for Organizations like SLA which she loved serving as a member of the Board of Directors
 H is for harmony, her daily lifetime challenge of living a life of internal and external balance
 A is for akamai, meaning wisdom; understanding beyond the headlines and appearances.  

Since being in the Islands, her faith has been deepened.

"Never in my wildest dreams could I ever have imagined that I'd one day be the legendary Duke Kahanamoku's biographer." Yet, through a miraculous set of circumstances I am. Sandy's award winning biography became a best-seller.

So, to know Sandy, is to know her motto: "Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow - perhaps it all will." Ecclesiastes, 11.6  
 


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