Clan Mackay North East Region
Your Regional
vice-president, Michelle Sandelier, shown with Steve Sandelier, her spouse.
Born: February
12, 1951 in Argentia, Newfoundland to
Elizabeth (Mackie) and Frank Baker Bennett
My father was in the US Air Force,
and was of Scottish and Irish descent which I am still researching. His mother’s people came to America in the
early 1800's. His father's side arrived
possibly as early as prior to the war for independence. My mother's parents were married and had
their first three children in Glasgow, Scotland. Her father, Thomas Struthers Mackie served in
the Royal Highland Brigade in World War I.
He worked in the Glasgow ship yards
as a ship's carpenter.
I left Newfoundland at age 8
months and moved to Oklahoma, Florida and then to
California. At age four we moved to Japan. I returned to the US just in
time to start the first grade. I
attended Department of Defense Dependent Schools in Kansas, Germany and England before
graduating at Eastern Wayne High
School in Goldsboro, North
Carolina.
I met and married my husband, Steven, at Seymour Johnson AFB
in Goldsboro, where he
and my father were stationed in 1970.
Both of our children, Steven Jr. and Jennifer were born there.
Steven and I traveled, on US Air Force orders, from
North Carolina to upstate New York and then to California where I entered
college at Merced Community College to study anthropology and archeology. From California we moved to
Maine where I
finished my AS degree and began my BA at University of Maine at Presque
Isle. Steve retired from the Air Force
at Loring AFB in 1990. Since we arrived
in Maine I had
various jobs in retail sales, and floral design. I did free-lance photographic work and worked
for six years as a congressional district staff assistant.
We have been restoring a 120 year old farm house in
Presque Isle and have settled in the community as have our children, both
married and have presented us with three, soon to be four, grandchildren.
I have been an active member of the Saint Andrew's
Society of Maine and a
member of the Clan MacKay for four years.
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