{"id":653,"date":"2026-04-13T19:32:39","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T19:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/?post_type=exhibit&p=653"},"modified":"2026-05-09T01:55:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T01:55:32","slug":"ywca-president","status":"publish","type":"exhibit","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/exhibits\/abbie-g-sanderson-1914\/ywca-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Retirement and Legacy (1959\u20131970)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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<\/object>Sanderson Imprisonment Interview<\/a>Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Sanderson sailed home from Japan in November 1959 after five years at Shokei Gakuin and settled in South Berwick, Maine, where her brother Arthur lived nearby. Asked to describe her retirement on a mid-1960s alumni questionnaire, she wrote in her own hand “Not too much thumb-twiddling yet, buzzing around enough so I don’t feel retired.” This description supported by the speaking schedule she kept across New England Baptist churches. She joined the First Baptist Church of South Berwick, where she remained an active member until her death. Her route home in 1959 had taken her through Japan, Asia, and Europe, and she circulated a “Dear Friends” newsletter the following year describing the journey to American Baptist supporters who had funded her work for forty years. By the early 1960s, she had become a fixture on the Maine missionary speaking circuit, often introduced as the Colby graduate who had been imprisoned by the Chinese Communists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In November 1964, the United Baptist Church of Littleton, New Hampshire, brought her in as a guest speaker at a three-day missionary conference themed “Lord, Give a Vision,” and the Littleton newspaper coverage produced one of her best surviving retirement-era photographs. On June 6, 1965, Colby awarded her an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree, citing her career as worthy of “the highest traditions of Colby men and women since the first graduating class in 1822” and recognizing her fortitude during “twenty-one months in 1951 and 1952 during which you were interned and kept under solitary room arrest by the Chinese Communists.” Sanderson also served actively as Class Agent for the Class of 1914, organizing alumni outreach and fundraising, and a March 1966 letter from Alumni Secretary Sid Farr thanked her for her work on the $1000 Challenge Program and expressed the hope that her class would be the first to reach its goal. Her late-1960s questionnaire mentioned a trip with her brother Arthur and his wife to the American Baptist Convention in Portland, Oregon, visits to eleven national parks crossing twenty-six states. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/object>Sanderson-Newspapers (Colby Special Collection and ABHS)<\/a>Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Sanderson died on November 1, 1970, in Dover, New Hampshire, at the age of seventy-seven, and was buried after a service at the First Baptist Church of South Berwick. Her Colby Alumnus<\/em> obituary identified her foremost as a missionary and a Class of 1914 alumna who had served as a class agent into her final year. Though her life carried her across seven different homes and through immense personal and historical change, Abbie Gertrude Sanderson remained defined by her unwavering dedication, thoughtful care for others, and remarkable resilience, qualities that shaped both her missionary work and the legacy she left behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sanderson sailed home from Japan in November 1959 after five years at Shokei Gakuin and settled in South Berwick, Maine, where her brother Arthur lived nearby. Asked to describe her retirement on a mid-1960s alumni questionnaire, she wrote in her own hand “Not too much thumb-twiddling yet, buzzing around enough so I don’t feel retired.” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"parent":381,"menu_order":9,"template":"","institution":[],"place":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibit\/653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibit"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/exhibit"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibit\/653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3099,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibit\/653\/revisions\/3099"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibit\/381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=653"},{"taxonomy":"place","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/colby-and-china-ea333\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/place?post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}