Bill Saunders
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Upon
graduation from Port Huron Junior College in June of 1967 Bill took a job
with Sun Life in Chatham for three months before seeing an ad for a sports
writer in The Chatham Daily News in early September. He took the position
and it started a thirty-seven –and-a-half year-career in the newspaper
business at the Daily News.
That career took him from sports writer to sports editor in 1968, city editor in 1980, assistant managing editor in 1998 and managing editor in 2001 before he retired in January 2005. Over his 13 years in the sports department he attended and covered hundreds of Maroon games.
Bill grew up in Dutton and went to West Elgin District High School where he played all the sports available and got interested in junior hockey by watching his cousin Larry Davenport play for the Maroons and the London Nationals.
Shortly after joining the Daily News Bill was approached by the Maroons and asked to join the executive to take over the position of publicity director – a volunteer position he held until 1972.
During his first season -1967-68- the Maroons, coached by George Aitken with an executive led by Harold MacFarlane and Bob Pickering Sr., were a member of the Western Ontario Junior ‘B’ Hockey League. Then from 1968-70 the Maroons would play in the Southern Ontario Junior ‘A’ League losing a seven game semi-final series to St. Thomas in 68-69 and then winning the ‘A’ title in 69-70 by beating Brantford Foresters in five games.
The 1971-72 season was Bill’s last as a member of the Maroons executive as the club was sold when the season ended to a Chatham group headed by Chuck Carson. In that season the Maroon waged a bitter battle with Detroit Jr. Red Wings that ended in a historic seven-game semi-final series that saw over 14,000 fans at the old Detroit Olympia for a Game 7 won by the Wings 3-2.
During Bill’s time with Maroons, George Aitken was the coach, except for a short period in 1971 when Jack Douglas took over. There were several players that started their junior hockey careers with the Maroons during that time who went on to play in the National Hockey League, including Ken Houston, Dennis McCord, Randy MacGregor, Dennis Patterson and Roger Lemlin.
In 1972 Bill was part of a group directly responsible for helping form Chatham’s first men’s no-contact hockey league – the Maple City Hockey League – in 1972 and was the first recipient of the league’s builder’s award in 1986.
Another new style sport –slo-pitch softball- started in Chatham in 1972 and in 1976 Billed formed a team –Sport Mart- in the then 12 team league. Sport Mart, over the next two decades, went on to become one of the Maple City’s most successful teams winning four Ontario Amateur Softball Association championships (including the city’s first in the long history of the OASA) and 10 city titles in various leagues before disbanding in the fall of 1996.
In 1998 Bill became involved with the Blenheim Blades Junior hockey club and has held several positions with the team since.
Bill and his wife Elaine moved too Blenheim from Chatham in 2000. Bill has three sons, a stepson, two stepdaughters and six grandchildren.