Rosetta Ford “Idella” Sands knew how to make every moment special, even when she didn’t have a lot to give.

Like when she went out in the woods and cut a Christmas tree down as a kid, her younger sister remembered. They didn’t have lights or ornaments, so Sands made the decorations herself. It was a very merry Christmas.

Decades later, when her son went off to the Air Force, Sands met him at the airport gate. She’d packed an old blue suitcase with all of the items on his military checklist and a dollar-store pair of sneakers. Her son looked at her and said, “I will make you proud.” She saluted him as he walked away.

In her final days, her son repeated those words to her again. He always wanted to make her proud, just as she’d made him proud to be her son.

Sands, a trailblazer who improved nursing education for students across Maryland and inspired future generations of Black nurses, died April 8 of complications from Parkinson’s disease. She was 93.

“She left a legacy for all of us to excel, to do the very best, that we can never give up, always reach higher — because you can do anything if you put your mind to it," said Alva Maull, her younger sister.

Sands was born Sept. 21, 1931, in Homestead, Florida, the second-to-last of eight children. Her mother died when she was a baby, so her father, a farmer, raised her and Alva with their older siblings and, later, a stepmother.

“We all said that we were joined at the hip,” Maull said. “Everybody thought we looked like twins, because we look so much alike. Growing up, she left home when she was in ninth grade, and that kind of tore my heart, because we had never been separated.”

Sands was an intelligent child who would read any book available, her sister said. As a teenager, she moved to Baltimore with her older sister to complete high school. When she left, her father told her not to forget she had her younger sister back home, and she never did.

She earned a small allowance but sent half of it back to Maull. Shortly after arriving in Baltimore, Sands bought Maull her first record player. Sands loved listening to music, especially jazz.

As Sands finished her education, she decided to follow in her older sister’s footsteps and become a nurse. Career options for Black women at the time were limited, and most either went into health care or education. She studied nursing at the Harlem Hospital School of Nursing in New York City before returning to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Maryland School of Nursing.

She was a practice nurse only for a short period because her true calling was education, said her son, the Rev. Dr. Michael Sands. Sands was a member of Union Baptist Church, where the congregation believed that “education was the way to justice and equality, and she fell into that lineage.

The same mindset didn’t exist at the time in her home state. She struggled with the idea of returning to Florida, where racism was rampant and opportunities were fewer.

“The only difference was the color of her skin, but her intellectual and social sophistication could match any peer,” Michael Sands said.

Instead, she brought Florida to Baltimore. Maull connected her sister with her eventual husband, who grew up in a nearby town, and it was love at first sight. They married, and Michael was their only child.

In Michael’s youth, Rosetta Sands decided to return to school to earn a doctorate from Union Graduate School in Cincinnati, and she traveled back and forth while working and caring for her son.

Her teaching résumé included stints at Baltimore City Hospital, Sinai Hospital of Baltimore, the University of Maryland and Coppin State University School of Nursing. At the University of Maryland, she became the first Black assistant dean and later acting dean of the nursing program.

But her success came with personal sacrifice. She was the breadwinner of the family, and her husband struggled to accept that. He left when their son was 16.

“She wanted to be a superwoman and be the mother, the wife and the professional, and she was just generations before her time,” Michael Sands said.

Later, Sands became dean of nursing and allied health at Tuskegee University in Alabama and dean of the health school at William Paterson College in New Jersey. She helped innovate its curriculum and create more opportunities for Black nurses, her son said.

She gave her time generously and would visit struggling students in their dorms. She loved attending student picnics and was rarely seen without a stack of papers and a red pen.

“It increased the level of professionalism and respect for the people who graduated from those institutions, which was the ultimate goal,” Michael Sands said. “Her standards were ultra high.”

That applied to her relationship with her son, too. She often told Michael that she was “not going to have a dumb child,” and she had him read some of the most difficult books she could find in the library. She was firm, but always loving.

The year before Michael went into the Air Force, he was wrongly arrested and spent Thanksgiving in jail. His mother showed up at the courthouse to retrieve him.

“It was the lowest point in my life, but she was there,” he said. “That surprised me, and that’s when I began to understand a mother’s love.”

Outside of career and family, faith was the biggest part of Rosetta Sands’ life. She sang in the church choir and often read from her little white Bible.

On her deathbed, her son played gospel music from his phone, and she sang hymns.

Among her favorites was Psalm 103, which reads, in part: “The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.”

The Banner publishes news stories about people who have recently died in Maryland. If your loved one has passed and you would like to inquire about an obituary, please contact obituary@thebaltimorebanner.com. If you are interested in placing a paid death notice, please contact groupsales@thebaltimorebanner.com or visit this website.