- Date Of Birth: September 18, 1941
- Date Of Death: April 21, 2016
- State: Illinois
In the early morning hours of April 15, 2016, Jack Sanders passed away at his home. Jack was born on September 18, 1941 in Centralia, Illinois. His mother, Bonnie Farrell (Apple) Sanders, and his father, Dwight, raised him, his oldest sister, Glenda, his middle sister, Carolyn and his youngest sibling Joe (Gary) on 4th Street, in a house that Dwight built. In August of 1966, he married his high school sweetheart, Bonnie (Nelson) Sanders.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by: children, Ericka and husband, Jamie; Jessica VanDyke and husband, Robert, and Tyler and girlfriend, Heather, all of whom live in Centralia; grandchildren, Frances Sue Sanders Holzer, Bodhi James Sanders Holzer and Addison Jo Sanders; sister, Glenda Melzer and husband, John, of Sheboygan Wisconsin, brother Gary Joe and wife, Janet, of Centralia and many nieces and nephews. Jack was preceded in death by his parents, an infant daughter, Whitney, and his sister, Carolyn Sadowski.After graduating from Centralia High School in 1959, he joined the army national guard and moved to Chicago where he worked as a shoe salesman and started a snowplowing business. In his younger years in Centralia, he made quite an impression, earning the nickname “Broadway Jack” and racing a racecar that he won in a poker game. The draft sent him to Europe, specifically, Baumgarten, Germany, where he earned the rank of Sargent, E-5.
He and other young men were sent to Florida during the 13-day Cubin Missile Crisis. Following his honorable discharge, he was a Lieutenant Detective in the Special Agent Department with the Illinois Central Railroad from 1965 to 1967. He investigated crimes that occurred in the vicinity of the suburban lines of Illinois Central Railroad on the south side of Chicago, an area that had the highest crime rate in the city at that time. He coordinated all major felony investigations on those lines with the Chicago Police Department. He attended Kaskaskia College, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and then achieved his Bachelor of Science in Administration of Justice from Western Illinois University in 1971. He was the first person in his family to attend college. He was an honor graduate at Western. While there, he directed a film that was later used in law enforcement training programs. From 1971 to 1983, he worked for the Illinois Law Enforcement Commission as Regional Director, after serving for 9 months as a Field Coordinator for Region 19 of the Law Enforcement Commission. He coordinated criminal justice activities in a 12-county region, including assisting law enforcement departments in drug interdiction.
He designed, authored and supervised a Major Case Squad program, the first of its kind in the United States, which assisted local departments in undercover, covert, anti-drug operations. The model that he created has been used by numerous departments across the country. He authored grants and received funds to establish radio communication systems that allowed police officers, especially in rural areas, to receive radio communications while away from their squad cars. He designed training programs for police departments and assisted local governments in establishing patrol patterns and specific police response protocols. He was an adjunct instructor at Olney Community College where he taught criminal justice courses.He was the owner of Copperfield Appraisals and worked for many years as a real estate appraiser in the Southern Illinois area. He rehabbed and revitalized the Old House of Kai building in 1997 and, along with his daughter, Jessica, created a venue in which weddings, reunions and business functions were held. He developed commercial properties in the Centralia area. He was also the owner and operator of Purdue Oil Company. In the 1970’s and 80’s, he owned and bred standard bred racehorses.
Always the champion of the underdog, he bought a stallion that was used as an Amish buggy horse and with the medical assistance of the veterinary school at the University of Illinois, turned the forgotten heir of a triple crown winner into a champion race horse. He and his wife Bonnie loved and cared for many animals, especially dogs and horses. Their first children were Doberman puppies, with whom they traveled the state and country entering and winning dog shows.During his lifetime, he was a board member on the Kaskaskia College Board of Trustees; a board member of the Community Resource Center; a volunteer with the Centralia Humane Society; a member of the Centralia Chamber of Commerce; a member of the Salem Rotary; a gubernatorial appointee to the Governor’s Task Force on Cattle Theft, the chairman of the Marion County Board of Review and a committee member on the Marion County Farmland Assessment Commission. He was the athletic director at St. Mary School and coached the girl’s grade school basketball teams like Bobby Knight where his signature phrase was “What did I just tell you?!”He is the toughest person that those who know him and love him best will ever know. Yet, his heart was tender and his intolerance for those that inflicted abuse upon animals and children matched only by his will to rescue them.
As a result, he had many dogs whom he loved very much. Jack loved to eat and to spend time with his friends, especially his coffee shop buddies. His family is very grateful to the support and kindness that his dear friends showed to Jack throughout his life. In the last months of his life, Jack spent every moment he could with his new grandchildren. They loved him from the moment they met him and he loved them.Jack’s favorite quote was from Teddy Roosevelt: “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” Though the feats that he dared were sometimes tempered and defeated by his poor health and those who chose to live in the gray twilight, his spirit did and will continue to endure, even in the most hopeless of spaces. Thank you, Dad, for teaching us to question and to never, ever, ever give up.
