Charles “Sandy” Sanford was born in Oregon and raised in McMinnville. During World War 2 he joined the US Coast Guard where he worked on radio and radar systems. During his time stationed in the Pacific Northwest, he met Jack Murdock, who later recruited Sandy to join Tektronix, which he did in February of 1949. Sandy was one of eight Coast Guard veterans Jack hired after the war and was among a large group of Tek engineers who did radio repair in their youth and a smaller, elite group who worked on radar during the war. This later group included Howard Vollum, Dick Ropiequet, Bob Anderson, Norm Winningstad and John Kobbe.

He started at the Hawthorne Plant where he played Santa Claus at the first Tektronix Christmas party in 1949. He gave out the bonus checks for the year. He later led an instrument service group at Sunset, but was recruited into the sales and marketing organization, eventually becoming one of Tektronix most successful Field Engineers, as described in Marshall Lee’s 1986 history of Tektronix, Winning with People: The First 40 Years of Tektronix. He was assigned to the Dallas, Texas office as Field Engineer.

 

This January 1953 photo shows Tektronix Sales and Marketing leadership team.

 

This December 10, 1956 photo shows Sandy in front of the Chicago Field Office.

 

Early TekTalk issues often featured employee travels. This November 11, 1955 TekTalk article describes a family camping group.

 

This August 1957 TekTalk article reports of a customer letter praising the work of Robin Hoag and Sandy Sanford.

 

This March 1959 TekTalk article recognizes his 10-year anniversary with “Tektronix is glad to have this big man in BIG D.”

 

This May-June 1959 TekTalk article describes a strange customer event with Sandy.

 

This May-June 1959 TekTalk article includes another fine report from a customer of Sandy and his admin.

In 1962 Sandy was the presenter in a Tektronix education film Time and Quantity describing oscilloscope function and operation and is on our Video Gallery.