2021 Grand Marshal

Amanda was born in August 1943. As a war baby, her parents had to scramble during the food shortages of the war to find food for their allergic baby. Goat’s milk was the solution, for which she has not developed a taste to this day.


Amanda’s family moved often across the south but finally settled in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1954. As a teen they enjoyed rock-and-roll, Elvis’ rise to fame, and lazy summer days.
The 1960s brought graduation from college with a degree in home economics, her first marriage and the birth of her two children.


Amanda and her husband, John, married in 1977 in Houston. She volunteered to teach art to 60 children at her daughter’s elementary school, manned phones at a crisis center, was an interviewer at a social services organization, and taught sewing.


Since Amanda was 6 at her grandmother’s knee, she has been a sewist. When they first moved to Sequim in 1995, the American Sewing Guild did not exist on the North Olympic Peninsula. She had enjoyed being part of the Guild when she lived in Houston, so she decided to help start the Silverdale Chapter and was their president for 4 years.


Volunteering and sewing have been her focus in Sequim. Amanda started the local Fiber Arts Neighborhood Group in the late 1990s. She helped start the Dungeness Valley Health and Wellness Clinic and was president of their Board for 3 years. Amanda became a member of the Soroptimist International of Sequim in 2008, where she served on a number of committees and the board.