Sandra Cummings Combs, 79, of Dade City, Florida, went home to be with God on April 14, 2023 at Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center.

Sandy was born on June 19, 1943, in Union City, Tennessee, to Robert and Jewell Cummings, joining her older brother, Paul. Her family moved to Michigan when she was just a baby, and she was raised in her beloved hometown of Plymouth, in the Bethel Missionary Assembly of God church that her father helped build and where she would one day raise her own family. After graduating from Plymouth High School, she married her sweetheart, Raymon, in 1960, and together they built a life and a love that lasted more than six decades. Together, they welcomed their three children, Tammy, Joseph, and Susan.

Sandy worked as a hairdresser for many years, sold Avon for more than fifty years, and for a time managed both the Super Bowl and Plaza Lanes and bowling alleys. Her truest work, though, was her home, which was open to everyone. No one could put on a spread like Sandy. There was always something wonderful on the stove, always room at the table, and always a refrigerator stocked with everyone's favorites, all ways in which she expressed her love. Her children's friends knew her as a second mom, and before long everyone, family or not, was affectionately calling her Granny. When more of her family made their way to Florida, she and Raymon followed, settling in Dade City, where she spent more than the last two decades surrounded by the people she loved most.

To know Granny was to love her. She was the light of every room she entered and the first one on the dance floor, with a magnetic personality, a quick sense of humor, and a vivaciousness for life that never dimmed. She was never a “typical” grandmother. She adored Elvis her whole life; anytime one of his songs came on, she would sing and dance along as if she were singing to Elvis himself, and no one who saw it will ever forget it. She discovered a late-in-life love for the singer Pitbull and was known to enjoy a late night at the casino. She loved to travel, and in her last ten years she saw more of the world than ever, with adventures all over the country and abroad to Europe. She loved her children fiercely and somehow loved her grandbabies even more. She was the cornerstone of the family, the one who held everyone together through every season, good and hard. Her heart was big enough to love everyone she met, and her love knew no bounds.

Sandy was preceded in death by her parents, Robert and Jewell; her brother, Paul; and her beloved daughter, Tammy. Her family takes comfort in knowing they are together again.