(Virtual) Gertrude Sanford Legendre

Talk about your Steel Magnolias! Gertrude Sanford Legendre is the most amazing South Carolina woman you’ve never heard of. An heiress, a flapper, a hunter, a leader of scientific expeditions, Gertie was also the first American woman in uniform taken prisoner by the Nazis during World War II.

Gertie partied with the likes of the Fitzgeralds, Albert Schweitzer, George S. Patton, and Bing Crosby. In her later years, she became an ardent conservationist, fighting for habitat preservation on the South Carolina coast and leaving her 7,000-acre plantation in a conservation easement (Medway, Mount Holly SC.

In this world of covid social isolation, get some tips on surviving lockdowns based on Gertie’s experience as a WWII POW from Kathryn Smith, her biographer and author of “Gertie: The Fabulous Life of Gertrude Sanford Legendre, Heiress, Explorer, Socialite, Spy.”