Former Homestead Worker Now Employed By Fort Lewis Lodge

Sandra “Sandi” G. Smith, a former employee of The Homestead, has been employed by Fort Lewis Lodge in Millboro since 2019.

Her three children, Levi, 28; Hayden, 26; and Toby, 18; have moved out of the area, and Sandi, a lover of the outdoors who has worked at numerous jobs in Va. and W. Va., has more time to spend outdoors with her pets, her German Shepard and her bloodhound.

Her position in the housekeeping department at Fort Lewis Lodge enables her to be close to the outdoors in that Fort Lewis Lodge owns 35 hundred acres where customers come to recreate by trout fishing, hiking, bicycling and sightseeing.

Fort Lewis Lodge features 15 rooms, four cabins and two cottages plus two large homes, Riverside, five bedrooms; and The Bend, four bedrooms.

Sandi remarked, “I love doing things out of doors, but I don’t hunt.”

“That’s about the only thing that I don’t do out of doors,” she added.

Sandi was born in Edison, N. J., and Jack Gardzinski, her father, was a long-haul truck driver. He and her mother, Linda, a housewife, relocated to the U.S. Route 42 area of Alleghany County just south of Bath County when Sandi was two.

Sandi recalled, “I attended kindergarten at Sharon Elementary School, and then I went to Central Elementary School.”

“We moved to a farm on Route 220 in Bath County when I was in fifth grade, and I graduated from Bath County High School in 1991,” she remembered.

Sandi continued, “After high school, I graduated from Dabney S. Lancaster Community College in 1994.”

While attending DSLCC, she earned her associate’s degree in arts and science.

She noted, “I worked full-time while raising a family, and I got a Regent bachelor’s degree of arts and science at Bluefield State College in 2011.”

Sandi has worked for the New River Community and Technical College in Lewisburg, the Monroe County Library in Union and the U.S. National Fish Hatchery in White Sulphur Springs.

She has also been employed as a teacher’s aide in the Bath County Public Schools where she worked with students enrolled in special education and assisted teachers in several ways.

Having moved to Myrtle Beach in 1999, she returned to Bath County in 2000, and she worked from 2008 to 2012 for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Sandi enjoys living in Millboro with her pets, and she has chosen the mountains over the beach.