James Leon Sanders
James Leon Sanders, 80, died on March 5, 2025, at the Hospice Care Center, Chattanooga, Tennessee. While there, the dedicated, compassionate staff gave Jim attentive, skilled, and comforting care, for which his family will be ever grateful. Dementia can become a very, very dark journey, as it reaches its final chapter, and these warm, giving people brought peace and light to that darkness. We thank them from the bottom of our hearts.
Born on Feb. 25, 1945, he was son of the late Lawrence Baustin and Beatrice McHone Sanders and youngest brother to sisters Betty McNabb, Frances Sewell, and brother Willard Sanders, all now deceased. Lookout Valley was where he spent his early (mischievous!) school years, moving on to Central High School, where he channeled that mischievous energy into chorus, plays, and ROTC.
Music became a lifelong passion--especially that of "Willie, and Waylon, and the Boys". He taught himself to play guitar by ear, so he could join his fine baritone voice with theirs. In retirement, he enjoyed nothing better than attending karaoke nights at American Legion Blair Post 95, where he even put his tech skills to work, helping set up the sound equipment.
He was an Air Force veteran of the 702 Radar Squadron, Hunter Air Force Base, GA, and it was skills learned in the military that honed his interest in electronics. Upon discharge, it was that skill set that landed him a job with Western Electric as a central office equipment installer for AT&T and the Bell systems. Thus began his lifelong career in the telecommunications field, retiring from what had become Lucent Technologies, when he turned in his tool belt after 32 years. It was work he loved and that took him on transfer to half a dozen states. He always made the most of those trips, learning all he could about the people, cultures, sights, and happenings.
He also had a deep love for nature, borne from roaming the woods and thickets that surrounded his childhood home. Nothing made him happier than sharing this love with family and friends, be it by searching out wildflowers in his own backyard, birdwatching from the front porch, on rambles through Reflection Riding, Audubon Acres, or more far-flung nature centers and arboretums. Finding "the road less traveled"--be it on a Sunday drive down a honeysuckle-hedged Sweeten's Cove lane, or the Blue Ridge Parkway, where he might encounter a deer grazing by a rhododendron bush, or see a murmur of swifts, soaring through a twilight sky--it all called to him.
Surviving family includes his wife, Patricia Hagan Sanders; daughter, Regina (Jamie) Smith; son, Larry (Angie) Sanders; granddaughter, Macie Sanders, (all from Chattanooga); granddaughter, Brittany (David) Hardy; great-grandsons Boston and Grant Hardy, (all from Lexington, SC); grandson John Wesley Higginbotham (Lowell, NC); sisters-in-law, Susanne Hagan, Soddy-Daisy; Rita Minkin, San Diego, CA; and Susan Hagan, Mt. Horeb, WI; and brother-in-law, Bud Sewell, Chattanooga; and many nieces and nephews and their families.
Family will receive friends for visitation at Chattanooga Funeral Home East Chapel from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on March 21, with graveside service to follow at Chattanooga National Cemetery at 2 p.m.
Military honors will be rendered by the U.S. Air Force Honor Guard and the American Legion Post 95.
In lieu of flowers, supporting opportunities for children in need, in whatever way the heart would compel those who knew him, would be the kindest of ways to remember Jim.
Chattanooga Funeral Home East Chapel, 404 S. Moore Road, East Ridge, has been entrusted with the arrangements.
James Leon Sanders