Remembering David Sanders' great impact on Graham and area sports

David Sanders was very connected with Graham High School with 23 years of service there.

But when Sanders passed away last month, at the way-too-early age of 53, it hit home all across this area.

There aren’t a lot of sports fans around this area who haven’t been impacted by Sanders whether they knew him by name or not. And those who did are very much missing their friend, their do-everything Director of Operations at Graham High School or their fellow football official and traveling partner.

The Graham Lady Blues volleyball team did a silent auction fundraiser for the Sanders family Friday as their pink-out game. Iowa Park was the opponent and many of the Lady Hawks knew Sanders and pitched in with a shirt that read “Hawks back you, too.”

Sanders was a football official for 24 years, doing both high school and college games. But he loved his Lady Blues. Graham volleyball coach Marci Faulk knew that all along. She coached two of he and his wife Meredith’s daughters, Marleigh and Sarah.

“He always made sure our gyms were taken care of and made sure volleyball didn’t want for anything,” Faulk said.

Faulk thought she and her team were special to Sanders. “Apparently he made every coach feel that way,” she said. “He took a lot of pride in the way our facilities looked.”

Meredith Sanders has been the tournament director at the Lu Allen Memorial, named for the former Graham volleyball coach, which meant David had duties as well.

“This year they discovered he had cancer the week of the Lu Allen and both were adamant about still working our tournament – total troopers,” Faulk said. “David was in the back gym doing the clock in the back gym all day. A lot of people didn’t know (his condition), but he was right there working.”

Longtime official Troy Wolfe can’t really believe he lost a best friend so quick. Just last week it was Texas-Oklahoma week. The duo used to go down to the Cotton Bowl on the spur of the moment without tickets and find one when they got there and create another memory. It just wasn’t right this year without Sanders.

“I’ve known and called with him for 18 years,” Wolfe said. “It (the great friendship) just happens organically. Anytime you spend that much time around somebody and I had to speak at his funeral. I met him when I was dating my wife and she lived in Graham and she worked at the city pool where he was the manager. I probably didn’t like him then because he was still coaching in Graham and I grew up in Breckenridge and we had a rivalry back then.”

But when they started calling games together, a lifetime bond formed.

“We struck up a friendship and it never was the same; we spent thousands and thousands of miles together,” Wolfe said. “It’s still tough. It happened so fast.”

Faulk knew Sanders for his job and as a church friend, but she also saw the parent side of him up close.

“Sundays was his day to take them to club in Wichita Falls,” Faulk said. “He was off and he looked forward to his day with the girls, investing his time in them.”

Trying to talk Sanders out of helping at his daughter’s final Lu Allen Tournament he would see was a losing cause. But the gains and wins Sanders contributed to will continue to build up. The Abilene officiating chapter heard about what was going on Friday and wanted to donate $1,000. He’s used to surveying the field as an official, but likely didn’t realize his impact that he can now see from above.

And speaking of being a bright shining light, just one story of the man where Sanders showed what a “doer” he was, as Faulk calls him, was when he was told the Texas Rangers baseball club was switching to LED lights in 2016 and maybe the lights they had would just be thrown out.

The Graham Leader’s Travis Lisle wrote about how Sanders took a trailer to the stadium that February to pick up 90 lights from Globe Life Park to bring to Newton Field.

"That was the hardest part," Sanders told the Leader. "Once I got to the ballpark, they led me into the loading docks on the third base line and they started loading the trailer with lights, 30 at a time."

Sanders always wanted his daughters, the Steers and Lady Blues, to be put in the best light possible. And it wasn’t just from his umpire or field judge position that he was always trying to check on forward progress. Forward progress was a lifetime goal.