Allan Robert Sanford

Allan (Al) Robert Sanford, 89, passed away quietly at home in Woodinville, WA early Tuesday morning (Aug. 9, 2016). Allan (Grumps to his grandchildren) was born April 25, 1927 in Pasadena, California, the fourth of five children of Roscoe and Mabel Sanford. He often reminisced about his childhood; BB gun fights, boxing at a friend’s house and having to mow a very large lawn (It really is not that big). After completing high school at Pasadena Junior College he entered Pomona College and played on the football team often noting that he had played games in the Rose Bowl, the team’s home venue. He interrupted his studies at Pomona to enter the Navy and after a year and a half of training as a radar specialist he had the fortune of being discharged right after VJ day. Back at Pomona he completed a BS degree in Physics in 1949, at which point he decided to bicycle through Europe with a friend and returned home via hitchhiking from the east coast to the west coast. Although he spent summers working jobs like painting the dome at the Mt. Wilson observatory where his father worked or working as a bellboy at a Lake Tahoe resort, his first real job came working for a geological survey crew throughout the west. He would often tell stories about being in various places in Wyoming or Colorado during his days on the survey crew. Ultimately this experience led him to graduate school at California Institute of Technology, where he studied Geophysics. He once was charged with driving Albert Einstein from Cal Tech to the Mt. Wilson Observatory and as a graduate student assisted Professor Richter (of the earthquake scale) in his lab. Under the guidance of Professor C. H. Dix, he completed his Ph.D. in 1958. In 1956 he married Alice Carlson, who had moved to California to get away from the farmland of Nebraska. Little did she realize that a little less than a year after getting married, she and Al would be moving to Socorro, New Mexico, where he was to take a faculty position at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Thus began an over 50-year-long adventure and love affair with the Land of Enchantment. It took Alice a few more years to feel the same, but in the end this became home; a place they raised their two children. Here Al built a long career and the envious habit of being able to walk to and from work twice every day. He would enjoy lunches at home and take a quick 10-minute snooze before returning to work. Over the years in Socorro, Al enjoyed picnics, hunting doves and quail, and fishing. When his kids were old enough he returned to snow skiing and camping. Several memorable backpack trips occurred in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado, with perhaps the most memorable occurring in August of 1974 when after a long trip his group returned to the Grand Imperial Hotel in Silverton, CO to see Richard Nixon resign. It is interesting and a bit strange that his passing occurred on the anniversary of that event. Other memorable activities included making wine (not very good), playing tennis with his son and coloring eggs black at the annual Easter picnic egg contest. One special talent worth mentioning is that for most of his life he would show people at parties that he could put his body through a coat hanger. This seemed to always surprise people and make them laugh. Al enjoyed having fun. Although he officially retired from New Mexico Tech in 1997, he continued to work on publications related to his research until the year of his death. During his career he received many institutional awards for teaching and research, including NM Tech’s Distinguished Researcher Award and election as a Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He and Alice continued to live in the house they built in 1965 until 2013. After retirement Al especially enjoyed getting up early in the morning to watch the sunrise from his front yard. He found much peace in those moments.

Allan is survived by his wife Alice of nearly 60 years, his sister Marguerite Sanford (Santa Monica, CA), his son Rob Sanford (Champaign, IL), daughter Colleen Marzluff (Maltby, WA), son-in-law John Marzluff (Maltby, WA), daughter-in-law Joanne Chee-Sanford (Champaign, IL) and five grandchildren: Zoe Marzluff, Kelsey Sanford, Danika Marzluff, Trenton Sanford and Joshua Sanford. In his last months he thought many times about life and its meaning. The following is a quote from some of his last words: “I suppose over the years the closest thing to religion for me was watching sunrises in Socorro, New Mexico. The extreme beauty of those sunrises made me wonder whether there is something truly unique about the earth - that it is simply not the result of many, very low probability events. So my human mind had reached the conclusion that the earth and its beauty is the result of some kind of divine intervention.”