Sager moves to Ritzville

- Editor's note: This is the final installment of a three-part series.

Ritzville – When William "Bill" Sager completed his tour of duty in Vietnam and was discharged from the Army, he returned to a job in road construction with the Washington state Department of Transportation.

Assigned to an office in Mount Vernon, his crew worked on the Burlington interchange and a four-lane highway from Anacortes to Mount Vernon.

On one occasion he had to navigate an especially high bridge.

"The bottom of that bridge was 95 feet above high tide," Sager said. "Another guy and I had to walk out on the bridge with rebar sticking up in the center. You had to keep your legs wide so your trouser legs didn't get hooked on the rebar.

"If you lost your balance, there was nothing between you and the water below."

Fortunately, Sager said, he was familiar with heights, having previously climbed a 65-foot radio tower in Vietnam.

His fearlessness probably stemmed from his mother's influence, he said.

"In Crescent Bar, she was the orchard boss and had no fear of running up a 16-foot ladder. My dad, on the other hand, was not comfortable beyond the first step," he said. "Standing on a chair to change a light bulb made his knees wobble."

Later, Sager took a job on another road maintenance crew. He drove trucks and loaders for eight winters on Snoqualmie Pass.

He also worked in Sekiu – a small fishing town on the North Olympic Peninsula between Port Angeles and Neah Bay.

Above-average rainfall in that town kept Sager busy clearing logs from roadways.

"Sometimes we'd get seven or eight inches of rain overnight," he said. "A road would become a river with logs floating down it."

When he learned that Provisioners Transport in Seattle was hiring long-haul truck drivers, he jumped at the chance for a new adventure.

"I was hired and got to co-drive a brand new Kenworth truck," he said.

Later, when his friend Andy purchased a few semi-trucks, Sager went to work for him, driving solo long-haul trips. That first year, he put 140,000 miles on the truck, mostly driving up and down the west coast.

"Some weeks I'd be in Los Angeles on Monday, Seattle on Wednesday, and back in Los Angeles on Friday," he recalled.

Religious life

"I was raised Catholic, but when I left home, I knew something was missing," he said.

Over the years, various coworkers invited him to Presbyterian, Lutheran and Baptist churches.

But he kept searching. He remembers listening to the New Testament on cassette tape during his long-haul trips.

One day while living in Woodinville, he happened to take the Lake City exit off of Interstate 5. When he stopped at a Richfield station, one of his previous Ephrata neighbors, Hank Briscoe, was standing behind the counter.

"Hank and his three girls - Shirley, Kathy and Karen - invited me to attend an Assembly of God church with them," Sager said. "There, I really learned to know the Lord. I got saved, and baptized in a swimming pool."

Tragedy strikes

On Memorial Day 1987, Sager was driving through Boise and decided to call his parents from a truck stop.

Each time he called, the line was busy.

"When my dad finally answered, he said my brother, sister-in-law and niece had died in a plane crash."

As reported in the May 28, 1987 edition of The Journal: "The two-plane accident occurred about 12:10 p.m. last Sunday in clear skies about 4,000 feet above rangeland 14 northeast of Ritzville, three miles south of Sprague Lake's western shore."

The two planes - a Cessna 172 and Cherokee PA-28 - were flying to Idaho for brunch.

In one plane was Sager's older brother, Kenneth; his sister-in-law, Gloria; and his niece, Karla.

The other plane contained Gloria's parents, Earl and Ann Moritz of Ephrata; and Sager's nephew, 19-year-old Kirk.

According to the Journal account, the planes were being flown side-by-side when they left Ritzville for Henly Aerodrome in North Idaho.

Moritz's aircraft was apparently underneath and to the right of Sager's plane when the incident occurred.

The Cherokee's propeller struck the Cessna's tail, severing the tail piece and sending the Sager plane into a vertical dive. The three occupants of the Cessna were killed on impact.

The other plane, flown by Earl Moritz, suffered damage to its left wing, a broken cockpit window and scars on the propeller. But Moritz piloted the craft back to Ritzville without incident.

The three people aboard that plane were not injured.

"The FAA never came to a conclusion about what happened," Sager said. "But I think the two planes got sucked together by a thermal. They were still climbing and hadn't leveled out.

"They didn't realize how close they were to each other."

At age 38, Sager's life was suddenly and irrevocably altered.

"I had been praying for a job," he recalled. "The job I got was coming to Ritzville to help my nephews."

Life in Ritzville

Assistance to his nephews included working his brother's farmland and managing two of the family's rentals on Birch Avenue.

He also operated backhoe for a contractor on the streets of Ritzville, and for five years worked for Don Swager at Ritzville Pre Mix Concrete.

Swager, who had been a mechanic in Moses Lake before buying the plant in 1976, later sold the business to Sager. For several years, Sager managed the company before taking a job with Adams County.

He completed his full-time career after seven years and eight months with the county, retiring in 2014.

For the last three decades in Ritzville, Sager has been working and volunteering.

He has taken mission trips to Mexico, served in the Ritzville Foursquare Church, worked as a trustee for the local Eagles Aerie and even acted in four local theater productions.

His last acting stint was at the StageWest Community Theater in Cheney, where he performed in the radio play "Miracle on 34th Street."

When asked about life in retirement, Sager responded, "I haven't been sad one day."