Sally Van Nostrand

Sally Van Nostrand’s drive to get a big bite out of life came to an end June 15, 2026, in Oakmont, Pennsylvania at the age of 86. She was born Sally Albertine Jeanette Clark on November 10, 1939, in Watonga, Oklahoma, to Millie Biggs and Albert Clark. Her father’s career in education took them to several small towns in Oklahoma and to North Dakota. She married young to Bob Murray and together they worked managing shoe stores in Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Enid, Oklahoma, where they parted ways. She worked her way through the University of Oklahoma as a single mother of two young sons, getting a degree in math to become an early computer programmer. Her first job after college was with Boeing in Wichita, Kansas. While in college, she met Chuck Van Nostrand, and they married and moved with his work as an Air Force officer to Dayton, Ohio, and then to Northern Virginia for his post at the Pentagon. She shared his love for sports cars, and alongside his military career she began working as a civilian employee of the Army Research Institute. After she and Chuck divorced, she bought a rowhouse on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and thrived in her work, getting a masters degree in Operations Research, attending the Army War College, and rising to the level of GM-14. A key research contribution of hers was learning about the capacities of soldiers during war-time stress by studying firefighters battling massive wildfires in the U.S. During this time, she married Irv Alderman, who worked in Human Factors at the Army Research Institute. Her research took her all over the world. After Irv died, she retired and began to travel in earnest for pleasure – she believed she had visited every country north of the equator, plus a few to the south. She met Bill Becker while participating in the Crystal City Walking Club in Arlington, Virginia, and they moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they cycled for fun. Finally, she moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to be near one of her sons during her final years. Wherever she went, she read voraciously, loved “color!”, and immersed herself in making things such as jewelry. She loved her sons fiercely and continued to foster ties to extended family, young and old, for as long as she was able. She regaled her caretakers with tales of her travels, and told them that if her shirt named a place, she had been there.

Sally is survived by her two sons, Robert Charles Murray and Bruce Randall Murray, Robert’s wife Raeann Olander-Murray, her granddaughter Allison Murray, her brothers Albert Lynn Clark and Bruce Clark, and many nieces and nephews.

The funeral service will be held at 10am on July 18 at First Christian Church in Seiling, Oklahoma, under the direction of the Redinger Funeral Home. 

Burial will follow in the family plot at Munice Cemetery, 235510 OK-51, Canton, OK 73724, and then a light luncheon will be served at First Christian Church.

Sally loved pets all her life, even performing “doggy dancing” shows with her Pomeranians. In lieu of flowers, she would have appreciated a contribution to your local animal shelter.