Dorothy Elizabeth Sanschagrin (Sadler)

Robbinston – Dorothy E. Sanschagrin passed away on Monday, October 16, 2017 at the Robbinston Bridge Home in Robbinston, Maine where she resided. She was 93 years of age. Dorothy’s family is eternally grateful to the staff of the Bridge Home for everything they did to enrich her life in her final years. It is so fitting that she was able to spend those years close to the water and to the Atlantic Ocean that meant so much to her growing up on Absecon Island in Ventnor City and Margate City, New Jersey, and later in her life when she resided in Newport, Rhode Island. Aside from the ocean, she also loved the Mississippi River near St. Louis, MO where she lived, worked and raised two children for 23 years. She spent much of her free time boating on the river at South Shore Harbor in St. Charles, MO. As a career artist, she used the ocean and river as inspiration for many illustrations, drawings and paintings. She was also one of the six civilian artists on loan to NASA from the Air Force and participated as an illustrator on the Apollo Moon Mission, including Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon.

Born Dorothy Elizabeth De Winton Sadler in Muncie, Indiana, her parents soon moved to Pittsburgh, PA where her father was Vice President of finance for Columbia Gas and where she first attended school. After moving again and graduating high school in New Jersey, Dorothy returned to Pittsburgh to attend college at what was then the Carnegie Mellon Institute of Technology and has since become Carnegie Mellon University. She graduated with a degree in Fine Arts Pictorial Art in 1947.

She married Thomas Edward Sanschagrin of Philadelphia, PA in 1952. She is survived by her daughter, Beatrice Jeanne Marie Tonizzo and her husband Capt. Luis G. Tonizzo of Pembroke, Maine; her son John Edward Sanschagrin of Phoenix, AZ; three grandchildren and also great-grandchildren.

She will be very much missed by all who knew and loved her.

A private service will be held at a later date. Arrangements by Mays Funeral Home, Calais & Eastport.

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