Sarah J. Blum passed away peacefully at The Pines Assisted Living in Prairie du Sac on February 4, 2021. She was 92 years old.

Born March 28, 1928 in Chicago, Illinois, she was the daughter of Howard and Mabel (Bierbower) Torrence. When Sarah was young, the family moved to Whitewater, Wisconsin, where she graduated from high school in 1946. After moving to Milwaukee, she was licensed as an x-ray technician, working for an orthopaedic surgeon at Columbia Hospital.

On New Year's Eve, 1948, Sarah eloped with Ewald (Pete) Blum, honeymooning in Chicago where they caught a now renowned production of A Streetcar Named Desire directed by Elia Kazan.

With Pete, Sarah raised a family of four children, first in Milwaukee, then in Sauk City where the family moved in 1973. She embraced her many "social networks" during these times, joining neighborhood mothers in ferrying children to little league games and tennis matches, rotating den mother duties, hosting bridge club and Christmas parties, and making clandestine runs to Illinois to purchase oleomargarine (before its sale was legalized in Wisconsin).

She had a special place in her heart for the performing arts, assisting the troupes in transitioning the old Fred Miller Theater into the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, and helping to establish the Sauk Prairie River Arts Center in 2000. She served as a board member for several years, and was quite honored to have received the Center's Ramona Kramer Founders Award in 2016.

Sarah had an adventurous side, shown not only through her elopement, but also through European travels with Pete and the uncanny ability to be a very early adopter of healthy lifestyle choices such as smoking cessation, yoga and acupuncture, plant-based diets, and holistic medicine. The move to the Sauk City "castle house," which offered a much larger footprint than the Milwaukee homestead, let her inner gardener loose, where she was known for her lovely dahlias.

Other passions included following professional tennis; cheering on the Wisconsin Badgers and Green Bay Packers; and visiting her family's farm in central Illinois, where she always appreciated the hospitality of the family who are such good stewards of the land. Sarah was known for her kindness, often times manifesting itself through her caregiving: tending to her occasionally klutzy kids--a cracked skull from a bicycle fall, a torn Achilles tendon, a walk through a glass door--and watching, as well as doting, over her grandchildren. Of special note is the care she gave Pete during his final years, and who precedes her in death.

Sarah is survived by four children: John, of Milwaukee; David (Vanessa), of Manassas, Virginia; Martha (Scott) Lindstrom, of Madison; and Mary, of San Antonio, Texas. She has seven grandchildren--Joe (Sara), Zachary (Karlee), Timothy (Leigh), Luke, and Hannah Blum; and Sarah and Andrew Lindstrom--as well as six great grandchildren: Zander, Asa, Zinnia, Sloan, Raelynn, and Rory.

A funeral, open only to family because of the pandemic, will be held on March 28, 11:00 a.m. at St. John's Lutheran Church in Prairie du Sac. Online condolences may be posted at hooversonfuneralhomes.com. A celebration of life is being planned for the summer. Memorial contributions may be sent to Agrace Hospice; River Arts, Inc.; or the George Culver Community Library (Sauk City).