Sanford sent her children to the first racially integrated public elementary school in Raleigh, North Carolina, while the family lived in the executive mansion.

[1] Sanford attended Christian College in Columbia, Missouri, before transferring to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she graduated in 1941.

[1] After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1941, Sanford worked as a teacher in the Chatham County Public Schools District.

[1][3] When her husband was serving overseas during World War II, she returned to Kentucky and worked as a teacher there.

[4] Her inaugural gown, a shrimp-colored peau de soie dress, is in a collection of the North Carolina Museum of History.

[1][2] In 1975 she was appointed by Governor Jim Hunt to serve on a delegation of Duke University faculty and administrators to visit the People's Republic of China.

[5][6] They married on July 4, 1942, at her aunt's home in Hopkinsville, just before her husband enlisted in the United States Army as a paratrooper.

[9] While living in the executive mansion in Raleigh, Sanford enrolled her children in Wake County Public Schools.

[10] She frequently invited her niece, who was a student at Saint Mary's School, to spend weekends with the family at the mansion.