Sandra Sokol

Sandra Sokol (February 14, 1935 - December 23, 2007) was an artist, chef and art and orchid collector who lived in Mountain Brook.

Sokol was the mother of Jeffrey Pizitz and daughter of Max and Sara Rogoff Sokol. She is the older sister of Jim Sokol and Bruce Sokol and grew up along Highland Avenue in Birmingham's Southside. Sokol graduated from Ramsay High School and attended Mt Vernon Junior College in Washington, D. C. She received her BA from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York and a Masters of Art degree from University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky.

She collected and promoted the work of many local and national artists. Sokol collected a number of each artists work including the work of Frank Fleming, Mitchell Gaudet, Tony Buchen and Jasmine Goodwin, Roberta Eichenberg, Karen Graffeo, Chris Clark, Jon Coffelt, Patrick Martin and Tracy Martin among many, many others. Besides her interests in the visual and culinary arts, Sokol was an avid orchid collector. At one time Sokol had well over 250 plants in her collection housed in a greenhouse hse had built for them adjoining her home. Sokol volunteered much of her time to the orchid room of the Birmingham Botanical Gardens.

As a child, Sokol was given a pet tiger for her birthday and once it was too large to handle at home she and her family donated it to the Birmingham Zoo. It was Birmingham's first tiger.