It was Tuesday, August 8, 1967. The headline of the Elyria Chronicle Telegram shouted, Garbage Strikers Defy City. A sub head told the American public that our Navy jets were dropping 500 pound bombs on a North Vietnamese army barracks in the Port of Haiphong. At the bottom right hand corner of the page another caught my eye. It simply read, Car hits tree, Elyrian dies. There was also a picture. The only thing that let anyone know it was the wreckage of a car was the mangled steering wheel barely visible in the photo.

The weather was typical for August in Ohio. It was hot and, unfortunately, there was no relief from the heat on the horizon despite the fact that the National Weather Bureau was promising thundershowers for the morrow. But as I further scanned the article below the picture of the wreck I forgot all that stuff. It felt like somebody had kicked me in the stomach. Robbie Sanderson was dead.

Rob Sanderson's nature, for the sake of a better description was, in my teenage life (and the lives of many other Vermilion boys) akin to Henry Winkler's character Fonzie in the old television series "Happy Days". People listened when he talked, and remembered the things he told them - forever.

He was not an academic genius. He did not excel at sports. But owned a personality that allowed him access to the lives and activities of all his peers all the time. He was handsome, friendly, and focused - acutely aware of both his natural abilities and his shortcomings. He was, in brief, a person who set goals for himself and worked to achieve them. It was as if he knew that God had allotted him only a short stay on Earth, and he needed to make the most of it.

Among his achievements was his construction of a hybrid car when he was but about 18/20 years old (likely his age in the photograph). He took one half of a 1955 and a 1957 Chevy and made a hybrid automobile from the front end of one and the back end of the other. So good was the work it would have been reasonable to assume that the car had mistakenly been assembled like that in the factory.

After his graduation from Vermilion High School in 1960 he and fellow classmate, Jim Fischer, attended business school in Toledo. Within a year he left school, went to work for Ford, and took up the sport of skydiving from a small airport that was located just a tad east of Wakeman,Ohio. It wasn't long before Robb took to "hanging about" Ortner's/Wakeman (Ohio) Airport on Route #60. This led to his becoming a mechanic for the airport, and that led to his becoming a pilot.

In October of 1964 he and his highschool chum, Jim, took off from Wakeman in his newly acquired 140a Cessna and headed west. They were virtually penniless. But somehow they managed to fly to California and back. Details of this trip I will leave to both Jimmy's discretion and his pen. Let it suffice for me to say that it was an adventure that included drinking beer with the governor of a western state, visiting pawnshops, and several "mayday" landings.

Two years after this barnstorming emprise Robb enrolled in, and graduated from, American Flyers Flight Training school in Oklahoma. Shortly thereafter he went to work for the Ortner brothers piloting small passenger and cargo planes across the country.

Looking back through all the years since it seems as though he had finally reached a plateau of achievement for the first time in his life. In late July of 1967 he married a 23 year old Wakeman girl, and they set-up housekeeping in Elyria. Barely three weeks later, on his way home from an all night flight for Ortner's, he was east bound in his 1958 Thunderbird on Rt. 113 just east of West Ridge Road near Elyria. Losing control of his car he went off the left side of the road and hit a tree broadside on the driver's side. And that was it.

The newspaper said that authorities estimated his speed to be between 85 and 100 mph when he hit the tree. Alcohol was not a factor. Fatigue, and an all out zest for life, likely were. I know that it is a cliché to say, "That only the good die young". But I would point out that clichés become clichés for good reason. It's because they're true.

_{Ref: Ancestry.com; The Elyria Chronicle Telegram; 8-8-67; Special Thanks to: Jim Fischer , Larry Howell (Vermilion), and to Rell Sanderson; San Francisco, CA}

Appeared in the 2-23-06 Vermilion (Ohio) Photojournal

Written on 2-19-06 @ 2:19 p.m.

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