Judy Sanders Obituary - Visitation & Funeral Information

Judy Sanders, age 63, of Albany, NY, and Lenox, MA, whose life in broadcasting began as a freelance reporter covering the Berkshires and who went on to an Emmy Award-winning career at WRGB Ch. 6 in Albany, died on Thursday, June 19, 2014, of ovarian cancer. In recent years, she moved from in front of the camera to behind it as the official photographer for three New York governors, Eliot Spitzer, David Patterson, and Andrew Cuomo. She brought to the task the political acumen acquired from years as WRGB's Albany bureau chief, her sharp journalistic instincts and keen sense of timing Ms. Sanders had earned her Emmy for locating an abducted baby, having figured out before police did, where the child was likely to be. She got that story by chasing the perpetrator down a Troy, NY, street in high-heel shoes, a wardrobe accessory for which she became famous. "It seems the higher the heels, the faster she went," freelance videographer Sonja Stark told the Albany Times Union in a recent article. "I can remember many times her clicking down the hallway with some legislator trying to dodge her questions and she'd be right there with a microphone in his face and I'd be struggling to catch up with the camera on my shoulder." Judy Carter Sanders was born in Sarasota, FL, in 1951, to Beverlee, a one-time actress who later became a real estate broker in Lenox, and Omar Sanders, who sold books for Random House. When her parents split up in the mid-1950s, she moved with her adventurous mother and three siblings to Delaware County, New York. They went to live in Hollywood, CA, for a year and later moved to Tyringham, MA. Ms. Sanders is a graduate of Skidmore College and, while there, studied art at Pratt and the New School as part of the University without Walls program. She loved making art, but when she discovered the excitement of telling stories through moving pictures, she dropped her paints and brushes and made the camera her medium. She herself was a woman in perpetual motion and was never happier than when she was moving—the faster the better. She raced sailboats on Lake George, jumped from an airplane for a story on skydiving, took herself and her nephew for driving lessons at Lime Rock Park raceway, and hung out the window of a helicopter to take pictures of the Grand Canyon. She also loved the social whirl of Saratoga in the summer. Judy Sanders is survived by her sisters, Deborah and her husband Bill Winslow of Lenox, and Vicki Sanders and her husband Christopher Burke of Boston; her brother, Clark Sanders and his wife Andrea, of East Meredith, NY; and her nieces and nephew Tiffany Wilding-White and her husband Carter and daughter, Lily, of Lee, and Jessamy, Shawnee and Sita Sanders of East Meredith. Services will be private. Messages of condolence may be sent to Roche Funeral Home, P.O. 152, Lenox, MA 01240, or rochefuneralhome.com.