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6 FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | JUNE 2020 I grew up sewing! My mother and maternal grandmother sewed all their lives so it was one of the first things I learned to do. Grandma sewed, knitted, crocheted, and tatted (made lace) back in Belgium and then worked in many of the large fashion houses on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. She sewed some of movie star Gloria Swanson's gowns and dressed my dolls in the scraps. Mom sewed all our clothes and taught me to do the same; my first Girl Scout badge was for sewing. Growing up, I pursued all kinds of crafts — everything was self-taught and/or learned from Mom who had no formal training. I love to draw and paint but later sculpting was a delightful discovery for me the first time I picked up a ball of clay. In addition to my artistic endeavors, I love classical music that was always being played in my childhood home. And I was inexplicably drawn specifically to the Old Masters' art, especially from Italy. When I was studying in England, I visited all the great museums, cathedrals and opera houses there and throughout much of Europe, and fell in love with all old art. Early in my childhood, I became enamored with biology and eventually medicine so it was no surprise to anyone that I decided to enter nurse's training. I used this early career to move from Chicago to Boston where I was introduced to open heart surgery and organ transplantation. I worked at the Peter Bent Brigham- Harvard unit with some great physicians who taught me a lot of medicine and medical research. Following one of the younger docs to New York, I helped set up a transplant research unit and performed more than 400 kidney, 200+ lung and about 100 heart transplants in laboratory animals first at Cornell-Bellevue and then Montefiore Medical Center-Albert Einstein University. I decided to pursue Immunology (study of the immune system) with emphasis on transplantation. I was introduced to Sir Peter Medawar, 1960 Noble Laureate, when he lectured at Rockefeller University and was soon invited by him to study in his laboratory in England. Although I worked very hard for three years, I was able to find time to pursue my love of art and music, especially opera. Prince Phillip gave me my diploma in 1971, after which I returned to NYC to do my post-doctoral at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center before heading to Montefiore-Albert Einstein to direct the Clinical Transplant Immunobiology unit, the start of my formal and final career in medicine. During that time, I started photography, met my husband of 42 years, and continued my practice of singing in church, school and local clubs in many venues. While teaching transplantation medicine for a month in China (1984), I met a physician who invited me to Southern California to consult on a proposal to use animal hearts for babies with fatal heart defects. This initial trip resulted in my participating as the Transplant Immunologist for the Baby Fae-baboon heart transplant later that year and my move to Loma Linda University Medical Center to create an Immunology Center in 1985. After 17 wonderful years of working with heart, kidney, liver and pancreas transplantation, I was invited to be the director of the Transplant Immunology service at the Detroit Medical Center at Wayne State University where we transplanted kidneys, livers, pancreases, bone marrow and stem cells, and I mapped the unique transplant markers of the African-American population to improve transplant results in their population. At the age of 69, I finally retired from this very demanding career in which I had been on-call 24/7 from 1973 through 2009. My husband had retired a year before me and surprised me with a beautiful 500-square-foot studio above the garage at our home in Big Bear Lake, CA. We lived in the mountains at 7,800 feet in the beautiful San Bernardino Forest, 90 seconds from the lake where we had a boat and kayak. In 2010, I joined our local Busy Bears Quilt Guild, produced our annual Quilt Show for three years, and taught quilting (mostly appliqué) at four local quilt shops and several guilds for four years. When we moved to Four Seasons in 2015, I joined the Citrus Belt Quilters Quilt Guild and have been photographer and editor of our monthly newsletter to date. Over the years, I have been in multiple local, national and international quilt shows where I have earned 80+ ribbons including the National Certified Quilt Judges Achievement Award for Outstanding Quilting. I am still teaching applique through local quilt shops and guilds, and donate my quilts to community services and auctions. SPOTLIGHT ON Sandra Lee Nehlsen- Cannarella By Sandra Lee Nehlsen-Cannarella ~ Thank you to Tina Soeten for facilitating and assisting with this article and pictures

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