GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Former LSU baseball coach and athletic director Skip Bertman’s wife Sandy Bertman passed away late Thursday night in Baton Rouge after fighting cancer for approximately three years.
The former Sandra Schwartz, a native of Brooklyn, New York, was 87 years old.
Skip and Sandy were married for 63 years and had four daughters – Jan, Jodi, Lisa and Lori – and doted on four grandchildren – Sophie, Isaac, Sam and Ezra.
Sandy and Skip also welcomed new LSU baseball coach Jay Johnson and his wife Maureen into their home shortly after Johnson became coach after the 2021 season.
“She was so gracious to us,” Johnson said during the Tigers’ pregame show before their Southeastern Conference opener on Friday against Missouri.
“Really went out of her way to welcome us both and made us feel at home,” Johnson said. “Talking to Skip’s former players and what she meant to them and talking to her makes it real clear what impact she had on this becoming the powerhouse of college baseball,” Johnson said.
“All of us here at LSU send our deepest condolences to the Bertman family as well as Sandy and Skip’s extended family, which includes all former players who I’m sure considered her as a second mom,” LSU baseball play-by-play announcer Chris Blair said before the game. “And of course all the staff over the year and all the Tiger fans across the globe.”
Former LSU pitcher Doug Thompson, who was on the mound when the Bertmans won their fourth national championship in 1997 in Omaha, Nebraska, is an analyst for baseball broadcasts on the LSU Radio Network.
“They just don’t make them like Mrs. Sandy Bertman any more,” Thompson said. “We’re definitely going to miss her, and it’s a sad day in Tiger Land. It’s kind of weird being here at the ballpark. It feels in one way that we shouldn’t be playing baseball today. But in another way, it almost feels like this is exactly where we should be.”
Sandy was a teacher at Madie Ives Elementary School in Miami, Florida, in 1961, when she happened to be having lunch with some friends at a restaurant and met Skip, who was teaching at the same school at the time and happened to be at the same establishment. They got engaged three months later and were married on Feb. 11, 1962.
Sandy and Skip Bertman at the original Alex Box Stadium in its last season in 2008. (LSU photo).
After a successful baseball head coaching career at Miami Beach High in the 1960s and ’70s and as an associate head coach at the University of Miami in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Skip and Sandy and their daughters moved to Baton Rouge in the summer of 1983 after Skip was named LSU’s head baseball coach for the 1984 season.
The Bertmans have lived at the same house near LSU since 1983. Daughters Jan, Jodi and Lori and Skip had been helping take care of their mother at home.
The couple’s daughter, Dr. Lisa Jo Bertman Pate, died in 2012 because of cancer.
Funeral arrangements for Sandy Bertman are pending.
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