Local man recounts life before Ritzville

- Editor's Note: This is the first in a three-part series on William 'Bill' Sager. Part 2 will publish June 7.

Ritzville - For William "Bill" Sager hard times began early.

His parents and four older siblings lived in a small trailer near his birthplace in Ontario, Ore. One scary night all the kids, including 3-year-old Bill, slept on cots outside under the stars.

When coyotes howled and circled nearby, his mother crammed the children inside the tiny trailer to keep them safe. It was one of the now 74-year-old Sager's earliest memories.

His father was often away working road construction jobs. When employed on the road from Winchester to Quincy, the elder Sager moved the family to Crescent Bar on the east side of the Columbia River.

They resided there until the government bought them out during the construction of the Wanapum dam in the early 1960s.

Soon after, his parents purchased land south of Ephrata near the Winchester Wasteway and White Trail Road. They farmed until bankruptcy became inevitable.

"We had almost 300 acres in beans - all experimental varieties. We harvested only ten acres because of bad weather," Sager said. His father sold the land and the mortgage company repossessed the farm equipment.

Sager started seventh-grade in Ephrata and graduated from Ephrata High School in 1967.

But soon after graduation, Sager realized two important facts about himself – he didn't like school and he didn't like office work.

He was happiest in the great outdoors.

"A neighbor boy and I commuted to Big Bend Community College for two quarters," he said. "That's when I realized I wasn't cut out for school. When I drove, I'd put my books on the back seat and they were still there the next day. I didn't do homework."

A short time later, the state highway department hired Sager and sent him to summer school at Washington State University for a crash course in engineering.

He learned how to use a computer, a transit and level, and surveying equipment.

"At that time, the state was building the Bothell interchange at I-405," he said.

Sager worked there for half-a-year as an engineering technician before transferring to the south Bellevue office.

There, he did location work to prepare for bridge construction at the Interstates 405/90 interchange.

"We calculated elevations for fill and determined how much fill was required to build the roadway," he said. "We also determined where to place bridge abutments."

During winters, Sager sat in an office, plotting cross-sections and computing earthwork needs for roads.

"That's when I really discovered I wasn't an office person. I'd be alright until the first coffee break, then I'd have to leave my desk and start making the rounds," he said.

"At that point, my production plummeted. I think supervisors noticed it, so they put me back on a field crew.

"I was much happier doing field work than being in the office."

In the winter of 1968 Sager and his crew started work on the expansion of I-90 east of North Bend.

"We brushed our way through the woods. They didn't even provide us with chain saws. If we had to cut down trees, we carried a five-foot 'misery whip' (a two-man crosscut saw) to cut 'em down by hand. Or we would triangulate around them," he recalled. "At times we were wading nearly crotch-deep through snow."

Sager didn't plan to change jobs. But on May 25, 1969, he received a draft notice.

He was headed to Vietnam.