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May 3, 1954-July 18, 2026
Butte
Sandra Ann “Sandy” Blanes, 72, of Butte, N.D., died July 18, 2026.
Sandy did not merely take part in life. She entered it with her whole self. She was everything, everywhere, all at once.
Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on May 3, 1954, the fifth child in a big Norwegian American family, Sandy grew up moving. Her father’s work on the Minuteman Missile Project meant a new town every few years, and every town meant earning her place again. She got good at beginning.
That served her in Brazil, where she arrived as a young wife expecting her first baby and stayed long enough to raise a family between two countries. She learned Portuguese by living inside it. She knew what it was to be surrounded by words that weren’t yours yet, and what it felt like the day they finally were, and so she taught: first wherever her students needed her, later in a school of her own, Sandy’s American English.
She had eight children. When her youngest, Nelly Fran, died at three, Sandy turned that grief outward. She showed up at the Federation for Children with Special Needs in Boston, ready and willing and able, and built a place there for Portuguese-speaking parents facing forms and meetings in a language not their own. Behind every meeting and form, she knew, was a child. Her work there was later recognized with an award from the Federation’s founders.
She read constantly. She played Pinochle and Scrabble to win, and no child was ever handed a game out of kindness. She could sit down at any piano and fill a room, and one granddaughter half suspected pianos simply appeared wherever Grandma went.
Butte got the last chapter, and she filled it the way she filled everything. She grew gardens, opened a gift shop, wrote for the local paper, played piano at church, and wrote two children's books based on her childhood as a "Missile Kid."
Sandy is survived by her husband, Manny, who says it simply: she was his one and only, and there will never be another. She is also survived by her children Michael, Matthew, Nathan, Carla, Jennifer, Lurian and Betty; her ten grandchildren; stepmother: Vera Evenrud (Curtis) Gruber and eleven brothers and sisters.
She was preceded in death by Nelly Fran; her parents, Edwin and Betty Jean Evenrud; and her brothers Larry and Paul.
Asked near the end of her own short biography how much more she hoped to do and see, she answered in one word. “Endless.”
Celebration of the Life of Sandra Blanes: August 17, 2026 at 1:00 p.m. in the Butte American Legion Hall. A delayed stream of the service may be accessed by using the link in the website obituary.
Visitation will be one hour prior to the service.
In lieu of plants and flowers memorials are preferred.
Memories and condolences may be shared at www.thomasfamilyfuneralhome.com.
Thomas Family Funeral Home in Minot, ND has been entrusted with the arrangements.
Published by The Minot Daily News, August 7, 2026.