COCOA – Special education was once far from a given in America.

Sandy Baldwin remembers those times well as the first special education teacher in Cocoa, and just one of two teachers of that specialization in Florida.

“It was terrible,” Baldwin said. “There would be moms in the regular classes who would shun our kids. One parent asked me one time if I wasn’t worried about working with these kids while I was pregnant.”

That was many years ago – more than half a century, in fact – back in the 1950s. But while she no longer is affiliated with any particular school after a 45-year career, the longtime member of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Cocoa is as active as ever in her lifelong mission to help the people who need it most.

“I’ve always been interested in helping the people who don’t get accepted by other people too much,” Baldwin said.

That interest can probably be traced pretty easily. Baldwin’s father was a doctor and her mother a teacher, and she was often exposed to those struggling with rampant diseases such as polio while she was growing up on the Space Coast.

So, her college choice of the University of Georgia was pretty easy, as she said UGA was just one of two colleges east of the Mississippi that offered certification in special education training.

Within a year of her graduation she got a call from an old friend in the St. Mark’s congregation. The school system in Cocoa, amid a flourishing NASA presence, was looking to add special education teachers as an added incentive for families to move to the area.

Baldwin started her work as Pineda Elementary’s first special education teacher – and the state’s second. Before her arrival, children with difficulties ranging from mental and physical disabilities to emotional issues were kept at home.

Within a few years, Baldwin was working alongside multiple special-ed teachers, including a black teacher, for the black special-ed students in the still segregated South.

“Everything’s changed a lot in 50 years, which is good,” Baldwin said.

During the last half-century, Baldwin went on many other adventures, helping Miami develop its then-burgeoning special education presence before she moved to Saudi Arabia for a few years when her husband got a job in the oil industry. There, she tutored special-needs students in secret.

“Everything was underground there, including religion,” Baldwin said.

Now Baldwin is back home in Cocoa, and most of her skills are channeled into outreach for St. Mark’s, whether it’s hosting a weekly coffee hour that welcomes the area’s homeless (many of whom are battling their own disabilities) to helping form the church’s first venture into The Open Table program to tutoring people through their own struggles.

“Sandy brings coffee and cheer and joy to us,” said St. Mark’s rector, the Rev. Gary Jackson. “She’s a true servant of God.”