Jackson Center, Ohio-based Airstream has announced that one of its longest-tenured associates, Bob Sanford, has retired after 53 years of employment. The company’s Research & Development manager for 40 years, Sanford officially retired on September 11.
In more than half a century of employment at the company’s headquarters in Jackson Center, Ohio, Sanford has watched countless concepts grow from ideas into finished Airstreams rolling off the line, the company said. “Along the way, Airstream has stretched and grown and evolved, always balancing its rich history as an American icon and its leadership as a design innovator. For many of those developments, Sanford was at the helm,” it noted in its announcement.
“I’ve been a part of so many great things,” said Sanford of his time at Airstream. “The collaborative and supportive work environment has allowed me to explore my curiosity and grow professionally. This company is like a family.”
A lifelong resident of west-central Ohio, Sanford began his career on the factory floor at Airstream after graduating from high school. Soon after joining the company, he was tasked with contributing to the team that worked on NASA’s Mobile Quarantine Facilities for the Apollo program. Four such facilities were built to house astronauts returning from the moon in case they brought back any harmful parasites. Today, the MQFs that Sanford worked on are housed in museums, including one at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington D.C.
“They’d bring you in and you’d do your job,” he remembered of the NASA project. “Then somebody else would come in and do something else, and maybe you’d come back and do something – it was a need-to-know basis. But it was incredible knowing that we’d contributed in some small way to that project.”
As the R & D manager, Sanford was integral in bringing Airstream’s cutting-edge designs to life. Many of the improvements Sanford initiated during his time at the company streamlined and fine-tuned Airstream’s hand-made manufacturing process to great effect, the company noted. In an era of computer-controlled machining tools, Sanford was renowned for hand-carving prototype pieces that preserved the functional and beautiful nature of Airstream designs.
“This company and this brand are all about loyalty and longevity, and nobody represents that more than Bob Sanford,” said Airstream President and CEO, Bob Wheeler. “Fifty-three years making an impact for this company – he gets a lot of credit for much of the design and development that’s kept Airstream relevant and up-to-date.”
Sanford plans to relax in his retirement, spending time with family and working on cars.
