Sada Thompson, a renowned and respected actress whose career spanned more than 60 years, was born on Sept. 27, 1929, in Des Moines, Iowa. Her family moved to Fanwood when Sada was 5 years old. She attended local schools, graduating from Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School in 1945. She graduated in 1949 from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, then called the Carnegie Institute of Technology.

Growing up in Fanwood, her parents would often take her to a summer theater where plays would stop on their way to Broadway or before they began their national tours. A prolific actress, Thompson made her mark in theater and film generally portraying the matriarchs in family dramas. In her stage debut in 1945, she played Nick’s Ma in William Saroyan’s “The Time of Your Life.” She was Mrs. Higgins in “Pygmalion” (1949), the resentful matriarch determined not to hurt again in “Real Estate” (1987), the embattled Mrs. Fisher in the 1991 comedy “The Show-Off,” the slovenly and bitter mother, Beatrice, in the 1965 production of “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds” and Dorine in “Tartuffe” (1965).

Her biggest Broadway success was “Twigs,” by George Furth, in which she played three sisters — as well as their mother. She won a Tony and the New York Drama Critics Award that season.
In the late ’70s, she picked up an Emmy for her portrayal of the levelheaded Kate Lawrence in the ABC drama “Family,” which ran for five seasons. In 1956, she won a Drama Desk Award for Moliere’s “The Misanthrope” and for an English girl mourning the death of her half-brother in war in “The River Line” (1957). She was nominated for an Emmy for her portrayal of Carla’s mother in the NBC comedy “Cheers” (1991).

She married Donald Eugene Stewart at Crescent Avenue Presbyterian Church, Plainfield, in a December 1949 ceremony officiated by the Rev. William F. Bassill, rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, Scotch Plains. They met at the Carnegie Institute of Technology.

Thompson was inducted into the Scotch Plains-Fanwood Hall High School of Fame in 2014. Sada Thompson passed away in 2011.