Emily Squires, 'Sesame Street' director, dead at 71

A six-time Daytime Emmy Award winner for a long-running children’s show has died.

Emily Squires, who directed episodes of Sesame Street for PBS, died Nov. 21 at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital by unknown causes at 71.

She started her work in television at CBS News after college, and worked for the Public Broadcasting Laboratory in public television’s infancy.

She directed more than two dozen episodes starting in 1982, though most of her work on “Sesame Street” was between 2005 and 2007.

She also wrote and directed episodes of “Between the Lions,” a show also on PBS that promoted reading. She also earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for “All-Star 25^th Birthday: Stars and Street Forever,” a 1994 children’s special she co-produced.

Squires wrote for soap operas “Search for Tomorrow,” “Guiding Light,” “The Secret Storm” and “As the World Turns.” She won a WGA Guild Award for her work on “Search for Tomorrow.”

She also directed documentary “Visions of Perfect Worlds,” a conversation with the Dalai Lama; “The Art of Being Human,” a documentary on artist Frederick Franck; and also “Five Masters of Meditation.”

She wrote “Spiritual Places In and Around New York City,” a book with her husband Len Belzer, who survives her.