Sandra Peterson

On Tuesday, September 26, 2023, Sandra Hatton Peterson, loving daughter, sister, wife, and mother, passed away peacefully at the age of 78. Sandie was born in Salt Lake City, Utah on May 8, 1945, the second child of Norman and Ila Hatton. After graduating from South High School, for years she worked for AT&T. While attending The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a young single adult, she met Ralph Peterson who had recently returned as a US Navy veteran from the Vietnam War. They fell in love and were married on February 6, 1970.

Family was always first for Sandie. After she married and started having children, she moved her young family back into her childhood home to care for her mother until she passed. Sandie later moved her father and sister, Judy, into her own home nearby in Taylorsville, Utah. When her father passed away soon after, she would go on to care for Judy for the rest of their adult lives. Sadly, in between losing both her parents, she also lost her precious daughter within months of her birth. Through those trials, the comfort from her family and friends strengthened her to find the peace she went on to share with others.

Sandie was a Homemaker in every way. As a mother she spoiled her children with love and care. She was a perfectionist and would worry to a fault. She held her family and others she served with to her high standards of perfectionism in design, organization, and cleanliness. She believed how you dressed and groomed yourself affected your own attitude and behavior and that of those you interacted with and thus she endeavored to keep herself and her family neat and well-mannered.

Sandie was the consummate party and activity planner for decades at her church. She would spend countless hours designing party decorations and her demanding attention to detail nearly transformed setting up the ward Cultural Hall into an art form. She served as Primary President and Relief Society President and in many other church callings, leading, organizing, and caring for her church sisters to spread their love through their ward and neighborhood.

She loved to craft and enjoyed spending time with her church sisters making countless holiday decorations to bring warmth and joy to the homes they made. She had a passion for giving gifts and wrapping them ornately with lovingly crafted homemade bows that were so beautiful the recipients often regretted having to unwrap them. One year she took to giving people perfectly wrapped presents designed to be kept to enjoy having the art of her gift and feeling the symbolic love inside. She also loved to give cards full of her heart-warming words written with her immaculate handwriting.

Sandie will be remembered as the definition of Compassionate Service. Having journeyed through her own difficulties, she was well equipped to mourn with those that mourn, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort. She touched the lives of those around her combining her gifts of homemaking, gift-giving, and being the ear ready to listen, the shoulder to cry on, and the heart ready to comfort, always there when others needed her help to lift their spirits.

The last decade of Sandie's life she battled severe Parkinsons where she relied on the care from many providers. Her family would like to thank all the doctors and nurses and give a special thanks to Leti Tahaafe, her live-in constant care giver over the last few years that enabled her to stay living, and eventually pass comfortably, in her own home.

Now, she has returned to her Eternal Home reunited with her parents, sister, and can finally enjoy the promise to raise her twin daughter Shantelle in heaven. She will be missed by her surviving family: her husband, Ralph Peterson; her boys, Marcus and Darrell; and her 2 grandchildren, Lincoln and Alexander.

A viewing will be held at 9:00 AM followed by a funeral service at 10:30 AM on Wednesday, October 4th, 2023, at the LDS Church at 4252 S Bennion Rd, Taylorsville, Utah. From there, interment will immediately follow at 12:15 PM at Salt Lake City Cemetery at 200 "N" Street. Gravesite is located in the Northwest corner of the cemetery. Enter off 11th Avenue through the first gate onto 920 East followed by the first right onto Wasatch Ave.

Those wishing to livestream the service may do so at the following link:  https://zoom.us/j/92362871069?pwd=R0lZMmhYUmFQcUN0UURSZjNhYWsrdz09