Mary “Maizie” Cameron Sanford, former board president of Maui Land &Pineapple Co. known for her quiet philanthropy and gentle management style, died of heart failure at the Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu on Sunday. She was 85.
“She was always loving, kind and generous,” said Anthony Acosta, development director of the Maui AIDS Foundation, where Sanford served as a board member. “She has been one of our major supporters from the beginning.”
Sanford, a descendant of sugar cane industrialist Henry P. Baldwin, who helped found Alexander &Baldwin Inc. in the mid-1800s, also served as publisher of The Maui News.
She grew up on Maui and loved animals and riding her horse Melekula through pineapple fields, the family said.
She graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts in 1952 after studying English and biology.
Her family said Sanford met her future husband, Wallace G. Sanford, a research scientist, while she worked as a summer intern at the Pineapple Research Institute in Honolulu.
The two were married in 1957 at her family’s home in Makawao.
Her father was J. Walter Cameron, publisher of The Maui News and head of Maui Pineapple Co. Her mother, Frances Baldwin Cameron, was the great-granddaughter of Henry P. Baldwin.
While living in Manoa, Mary Sanford for years commuted to Maui each week to serve on numerous business and nonprofit boards.
She also supported her brother Colin P. Cameron’s leveraged buyout of Maui Pineapple from Alexander &Baldwin in 1969 to found Maui Land &Pineapple Co.
In an effort to diversify the economy on Maui, Cameron later founded the Kapalua Resort in West Maui and supported the development of a Maui research and technology park in Kihei.
After Cameron died while swimming near his residence in Spreckelsville in 1992, Sanford assumed major duties as president at Maui Land &Pineapple while continuing her philanthropic work on nonprofit boards, including the J. Walter Cameron Center and Maui AIDS Foundation. Sanford, whose son Allen G. died of AIDS, served as a board member on the foundation.
Mae McCarter Alberstein, a retired general manager of The Maui News, described Sanford as someone who cared about the well-being of employees and loved animals.
“She was a fabulous lady,” Alberstein said.
She recalled how Sanford rescued and nursed a baby mynah bird back to health and would carry on conversations with business associates in her office at The Maui News with the convalescing bird near her side. “She nursed it back to health until it was able to fly,” Alberstein said.
The family lost control of Maui Land &Pineapple Co. with the purchase of its controlling shares by a trust established by Steve Case, then chairman of AOL Time Warner, in 2002.
In 2008 Sanford donated $120,000 for a memorial garden at Maui Nui Botanical Gardens in Central Maui as a tribute to her late husband.
Mary Sanford is survived by son Jared and daughter Claire Sanford; Claire Sanford’s husband, Charles Crowley; nephews Richard and Douglas Cameron; and nieces Meg Cameron and Effie Cameron Ort.
Services will be held at the Makawao Union Cemetery at 3 p.m. Friday.
