Sarah Adams, chemist and hospital toxicologist, dies at 83

Sarah Adams mixed energy with altruism to produce "the most magical life" and memories for her family, including laughs they shared over her short-lived job as a bus driver delivering students to the high school she was attending.

A chemist, she rose to be the supervisory toxicologist at Metropolitan Hospital in Manhattan after 20 years in a male-dominated field, retiring in 2002 after 42 years.

Unconventional, she gave her three daughters what she thought were distinctive names — Inga St. Tuesday, Camille Tatum and Beth Marie.

“Sarah was a beacon of unconditional love and support" for her daughters, said Inga St. Tuesday Adams of Waldorf, Maryland. “She made the best of memories with them, teaching them the importance of being able to use your hands and your mind to conquer anything you desire. She could constantly be heard quoting Scripture and her made-up southern, wise tales that managed to get a laugh out of all of her girls.”

Adams, a longtime Westbury resident born in Huntersville, North Carolina, died of renal cancer and failure on Jan. 16 in Waldorf. She was 83.

She lived a storied life. A fan of "The Dr. Oz Show," Adams viewed the television doctor as her personal physician. She gave her grandchildren lab coats and goggles because she wanted them excited about science. The pandemic and dialysis were no match for the senior citizen as she drove to treatment or zipped up and down the neighborhood visiting the sick, delivering food and tooting her horn as she called out, “Hi, sugar” or “How’s my girl? Love you.”

“What I will miss most about Sarah is how she loved on people,” said best friend and former neighbor Carolyn Marshall of Westbury. “Sarah saw the good in everybody. If you were considered like a little nobody, she made you feel great. She would hug you and call you the sweetest names. You could trust her, tell her anything. She was the epitome for what a Christian should be like.”

Drove bus in high school

Even as a child in Huntersville, Sarah was independent. Her father never knew she had become the local school district’s first female school bus driver until she parked the bus on the home driveway, her daughter said. He wanted her, a science and math “brainiac” who mentored fellow students, to focus on education. Still she was allowed to drive the bus for a couple months.

With her 1961 chemistry degree from North Carolina Central University, Adams ventured to New York City and got a job working at Metropolitan’s laboratory, testing urine, among other things.

She met accountant Carnell Adams during her college alumni gathering in Queens and married him in 1975; they moved to Westbury two years later. It was not just a love match — they matched in their optimism, humor, values and even cooking skills, family and friends said.

Their welcoming spirit turned their home into a magnet for neighborhood children, who often stayed so long that Sarah would urge Carnell to light up the grill because the young ones must be hungry. Both were accomplished cooks; her homestyle dishes and pies won over co-workers and his annual fish fry fundraisers for the Westbury United Methodist Church drew people from afar. The couple were key fundraisers for neighborhood children’s college scholarships and for the church to help people in need.

But Adams faced one of her biggest challenges when an electrical fire broke out overnight in their home in 2006. Sarah was given a 20% chance of survival with surgery, but her husband — “Prince Charming” — died. Against doctors’ orders, she checked out of the hospital to go to his funeral, then checked back in, recalled Marshall, a nurse who helped Adams after the fire.

Daughter of a pastor

She rebuilt the house, and family and friends said her faith gave her strength. “It reignited a fire in her to keep going,” Adams said. “She realized God had given her another chance.”

Adams, the daughter of a pastor, continued to be a tireless “servant leader” by working on several church committees, family and friends said.

“She was a lady who was very, very sympathetic to the plight of people and always had a helping hand,” said the church’s Rev. Elon Sylvester.

In 2020, Adams left her Pepperidge Road home to live with her daughter Inga in Maryland and started canning vegetables and fruit again, passing on the tradition to her daughters and grandchildren, her daughter said. Adams sold her jams and preserves at festivals, touting earnings to her friends.

The Adams girls followed motherly advice and bought 82 acres of nearby farmland to establish Pepperidge Promise, a canning business named in honor of their parents.

“She would have our house smelling of vinegar and looking like a science project,” her daughter said, “but she loved that.”

In addition to her daughter Inga, she is survived by daughters Camille Tatum Jones of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, and Beth Marie Adams of Odenton, Maryland; and sister Helen Lexi Rivers of Huntersville.

A service was held Jan. 28 at the Westbury United Methodist Church, followed by burial at Westbury Friends Cemetery, next to her husband.