ARCHIVE

  • Last modified 4649 days ago (July 7, 2011)

MORE

Retiree's legacy is in power lines, people

Sanders again sparked into action before his retirement as city public works chief

Staff writer

On June 17, Christian Pedersen watched his boss Harvey Sanders transform from a 68-year-old public works director, only six days from retirement, back into a 20-year-old lineman.

A brutal windstorm that night, which downed power lines throughout the city with 93 mph winds, vitalized Sanders. Pedersen said it was almost as if the public works director could rotate his head 360 degrees to diagnose outages in any direction.

“He never skipped a beat,” Pedersen said. “He knew exactly where the outages were.”

Sanders, Pedersen, Travis Schafers and the rest of the Marion electrical crew worked 28 hours over the next three days to restore power to the city.

Sanders said it was advantageous that power returned from Westar Energy within an hour of the first outages. Pedersen said it was Sanders’ uncanny diagnostic ability that led the electrical team during the disaster.

“He was always the guy I could go to if there was something I didn’t know,” Pedersen said. “He and Bob Schmidt built the system we have now.”

Sanders is familiar with intense, high pressure situations.

Before the 2005 ice storm hit, Sanders asked Pedersen to make sure all the city trucks were stocked; an ice storm was a certainty. Pedersen said he followed the instruction but laughed off the decisive prediction.

For the next five days the Marion City crew — with Sanders and Marion City Administrator David Mayfield leading the way — worked in a frigid climate on icy footing.

“He had a plan from the get-go,” Pedersen said of Sanders.

That plan included working on as many downed lines as possible before power was restored by Westar.

“We went 38 hours without any sleep,” he said of the crews’ work during the storm.”

Sanders also worked on power lines after several natural disasters during his time as a lineman for Marion from 1963 through 1988.

There was a tornado that hit the Marion County Courthouse in 1979.

There was another damaging ice storm in the 1980s.

“That wasn’t quite as bad,” Sanders said.

Even in pursuits separate from his career as a city lineman, Sanders gravitated toward the dangerous and exciting.

Sanders was in the Army National Guard for 13 years. In 1971, he was called to quell riots that had started in Wichita over the war in Vietnam.

“Back then they would riot over anything,” Sanders said.

He was stationed at 13th Street and Pike. He patrolled a shift from midnight to 6 a.m., occasionally being shot at in the process.

“You expected everything,” he said.

Sanders was later awarded a commendation by the Wichita Chamber of Commerce for his actions.

Sanders also worked as a part-time police officer, while working as a lineman. He first served under his father who was the Chief of Police in Marion for 25 years, until the mid-1960s.

“He was always tougher on me than anyone else,” Sanders said.

Sanders attributes much of his hardworking nature to his father’s instruction. His father was a near mirror image of Sanders — full-time police officer and part-time city lineman. Sanders remembers following his father as he worked to restore the city after the flood in 1951.

Sanders later worked full-time as a police officer from 1988 through 1991, while starting his business, Sanders Electric.

“Some things, you just want to forget about,” Sanders said of specific events when he was a police officer.

On top of his other duties, Sanders was one of the first volunteer Emergency Medical Technicians, working 18 years as an EMT in the 1970s and 80s.

“You didn’t get a lot of sleep back then,” Sanders said.

Even when it seemed as though the chaotic nature of his previous careers was slowing down in the early 1990s, Sanders was still trading sleep for work.

Sanders quit working for the city in 1988 to start Sanders Electric. By low bidding, Sanders acquired huge contracts, including multiple churches and both extensions to Marion Elementary School.

As Sanders Electric’s only full-time employee, he would often work all day on electrical projects and then hit the beat that night as a Marion police officer. Eventually Sanders had to stop working as a police officer to concentrate on his business from 1991 through 1998.

Helping Sanders at the beginning was his wife of 32 years, Betty.

“I was his people,” she said. “I sat there and put ceiling fans together.”

The city of Marion came calling again in 1996, requesting Sanders’ services as public works director. He initially turned them down, but he accepted the position in 1998.

His goal as public works director — what he defines as his legacy in that position — was to upgrade the city’s electrical service by connecting the 12-5 loop on the south side of town with a second loop on the north side.

“It’s what they brought me in to do,” Sanders said.

The project took 10 years, from 1998 through 2008, and required the changeover of countless transformers. Linemen set poles and strung together primary lines. The finished product allows Marion to run electricity consistently at 100 percent capacity despite severe summer weather.

“Harvey had it in his mind that he was going to build that line,” Pedersen said. “Basically, if Harvey says he is going to do something, by God, it is getting done.”

The 12-5 line, while helping Marion run more efficiently, was part of Sanders’ other legacy — teaching young electrical crew members how to be a hardworking and smart team.

“That was one of things that really helped all of us,” Pedersen said. “Once you build the line you never forget where everything is.”

After Sanders retirement June 23, Pedersen became electrical superintendent for the city. Sanders had been grooming Pedersen to take over as the head lineman for the city. They attended classes taught by various schools and provided by Westar.

“I had gone to school to be a lineman; I had that knowledge with me,” Pedersen said. “But he really taught me about our system in Marion. He was really an incredible person to work with.”

Betty Sanders said her husband’s strongest character traits are his ability to keep an even temper and his patience. His patience was always on display when teaching any of the electrical crewmembers.

“He would teach me to deal with people, just be patient with people,” Pedersen said. “We’re trying to work on it as fast as we can as safe as we can.”

After starting as an apprentice electrician when he was 14 with Paul Keazer, Sanders could not leave electricity behind for good; he will still operate his own business, although he does have a few employees now.

“I think I’ll be busy enough,” Sanders said.

He plans to fish and golf in retirement but vowed to stay active. Pedersen just hopes his mentor will take a little time for himself.

“We all have that dream; that we can retire with pride,” Pedersen said.

Last modified July 7, 2011

 

X

BACK TO TOP