Esther L. Sandstrom, a former middle school librarian and a world traveler, died May 26 of heart failure at Franklin Square Hospital Center. She was 95.
Esther Louise Plancon, the daughter of French immigrants, was born and raised in Springfield, Mass., where she graduated in 1933 from Classical High School.
She earned a bachelor's degree in English from American International College in Springfield in 1937.
She worked as a telephone operator after college and in 1937 married John Russell Sandstrom. They moved to Towson in the 1950s, when her husband, an engineer, took a position with Bendix Radio on East Joppa Road.
Mr. Sandstrom died in 1988.
Later in life, she earned a master's degree in library science from the University of Maryland, College Park, and during the 1960s and 1970s was head librarian at what is now Ridgely Middle School.
"She served the students with dedication throughout her career and was especially fond of working with young adolescents," said a son, Alan R. Sandstrom of Pittsfield, Mass. "She was a Great Books enthusiast and a proponent of liberal education."
An ardent supporter of civil rights, Mrs. Sandstrom considered attending the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, on the Mall in Washington in 1963, as one of the highlights of her life.
She also maintained a keen interest in politics and social issues, and was opposed to capital punishment and U.S. military intervention around the world.
A world traveler, she had visited six of the seven continents, and continued traveling widely until she was 92, her son said.
The former Joppa Road resident, who had lived at Oak Crest Village for the past decade, married a former high school sweetheart, Robert Andrew Lambert, a retired cargo pilot, in 1995. He died in 2008.
Mrs. Sandstrom enjoyed spending summers at a cabin at Center Pond in Becket, Mass.
Services are private.
She is survived by another son, John E. Sandstrom of Baltimore; two daughters, Joanne S. Peppas of Belfast, Maine, and Susan E. Sandstrom of Baltimore; four grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.