With Deen Day Sanders, it can be arranged

   The life Deen Day Sanders lives is just as “together” as the flower arrangements she creates.

   Her big blended family is living proof. In 2002, this Duluth resident, widow of Cecil B. Day, founder of Days Inns of America, married James Sanders, her late husband’s fraternity brother from Georgia Tech. Just as naturally as she arranges flowers, she blended her five children, 16 grandchildren and one great-grandchild and his four children and eight grandchildren into one big family. Every summer all 40-something of them travel together on a chartered bus for two weeks.

   “I hold the grandchildren accountable for learning from our travels,” said Sanders, who was National and Georgia Mother of the Year in 1997.

   Beyond her love of family, Sanders, who holds an Honorary Degree from Georgia Tech and Honorary Doctorates from Mercer and Georgia State University, reaches out to the world with her organizational abilities. She was the first woman to serve on the Georgia Board of Industry, Trade and Tourism and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and was Chairman of the Board for the Cecil B. Day Investment Company.

   An active member of John’s Creek Baptist Church, Sanders has served on the board of trustees the American Bible Society.

   She’s most recently pulled together the Cecil B. Day Chair in Business Ethics at Georgia Tech.

   “My late husband was a smart, successful businessman. But more importantly, he was an honest, ethical man,” said Sanders. “It’s important for students to understand that you don’t have to make a choice between success and ethics.”

   As civic oriented as her life might seem, Sanders is as comfortable in the kitchen as she is in a board room.

   “I love to cook. I did the cooking for the first Jimmy Carter Habitat of Humanity Work Camp in New York City. Three of us cooked for 60 people.”

   Between four decades of hundreds of board meetings of dozens of organizations, Sanders has managed to arrange time for her love of gardening, and holds the title of Honorary Life President of the National Garden Clubs, Inc.

   Most recently, she has taken her love of nature indoors and expresses her creativity through flower arranging. Her latest title, Vice President of World Association of Flower Arrangers USA takes her well into the future.

   When Sanders joined WAFA in the 1990’s, she was impressed with the way it connected flower arrangers around the world, but thought the organization needed a World Flower Show. So she made it happen. Sanders is now on a worldwide committee of 10 people planning the Twelfth World Flower Show for 2011 in Boston, which will be the first in the United States. And with Deen Day Sanders making the arrangements, this is bound to be the best show ever!

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