Micky Sanborn
Mickey W. Sanborn died on January 21, 2017, following a thirteen year battle with cancer.
During thirteen years of intensive treatment she remained actively engaged with family and friends, continuing to pursue her love of travel and photography, intensely following current events, and working zealously on several committees of her condominium association.
Born on February 18, 1943, Mickey grew up on a small farm in north Louisiana. She studied at both L.S.U. and Louisiana Tech, working at local newspapers (including the Baton Rouge Advocate) throughout her undergraduate studies, and also doing photography work for Louisiana Tech until she graduated.
After graduation she worked as a photojournalist for a variety of news media, including the Associated Press, the Baton Rouge Advocate, and the Today show, covering events from sports car races to news conferences to weather disasters. Her remarkable photographs of the survivors of Hurricane Camille in 1969 became classic documentation of that disaster, and were featured on Today.
In 1977 she was hired as a civilian employee of the United States Air Force, becoming the first woman to hold a position as photographer for the Air Force.
She worked as an Air Force photographer for thirty years, providing photographic records of a wide range of Air Force activities and achievements, including many successful international trips with the Air Force Band, vitally important joint reviews with military personnel of U.S. allies, special events honoring the men and women who risked and often gave their lives in missions essential to the well-being of our country (such as a trip honoring the brave pilots and crew members who in World War Two “flew he hump” across the Himalayan Mountains in order to supply Chinese and U.S. soldiers fighting the Japanese), and a wide variety of trips and meetings to provide civilians from many leadership areas with greater knowledge of the work and role of the U.S. Air Force.
These photographic records are found in Air Force publications, treasured “scrapbooks” given to many of those participating in the events, and in places of honor on the office walls of many Air Force officers.
In 1987 Mickey married Walter Jordan, and Air Force pilot who retired as a colonel and then spent eighteen years working with Lockheed’s Space and Missile program, followed by a decade working for UNISYS and Draper Labs; they enjoyed many years of happy marriage until his death in 2013.
Mickey’s ashes will be interred beside Walt’s at Arlington National Cemetery.
She is survived by her brother, Bruce Waller, and two nephews, Russell Waller and Adam Waller.