Early Life
Roberts was born Barbara Kay Hughey on December 21, 1936 in Corvallis, Oregon to Bob and Carmen Murray Hughey. Her father, a millworker, was a descendant of Oregon Trail pioneers. The Hugheys' second daughter Pat was born a few years later and then they moved to Los Angeles, California in 1940 where her father worked as a machinist. Following World War II, the Hugheys returned to Oregon, settling in Gold Creek in Yamhill County in 1945, and then finally in Sheridan.
In 1954, she married her high school sweetheart Neal Sanders, graduating the following year from Sheridan High School. The couple moved to Texas, where they had two children, Mike and Mark, before returning to Oregon several years later, settling in Portland where she attended Portland State University from 1961 to 1964.
With her older son Mike diagnosed in 1962 as "severely emotionally disturbed" (later identified as autism), she became an advocate for special-needs children. In 1971, she successfully lobbied the Oregon State Legislature to require public schools to guarantee educational rights to these children. In 1972, her marriage to Neal ended in divorce.
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