Today, we’d like to introduce you to Thomas Sanger.
Hi Thomas, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your back story.
In college, I studied journalism, a skill I could use when I was drafted into the Army in 1966 during the Vietnam War. After leaving the Army in 1968, I worked in the newsroom of a Los Angeles radio station, then got married and moved to Australia. There, I got a job with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and after two years, my wife, Kay, and I returned to California.
Back in Los Angeles, I worked for the Associated Press wire service before going into public relations for the next 20 years. For the last ten years of my career, I was the corporate secretary for a large utility holding company in L.A. I arrived in San Diego in 1998 as a result of the merger with SDGE’s parent company that created Sempra Energy.
I retired from Sempra in 2005. In 2011, I rekindled my interest in my grandmother’s experience as a survivor aboard a passenger ship, the S.S.Athenia, that was sunk by a German submarine at the beginning of WWII. Today, very few people are aware of this event, which happened in September of 1939, four years before I was born.
Fortunately, my grandmother survived the sinking and wrote a vivid account of her experiences, which became the inspiration for my historical novel about the sinking, titled “Without Warning.” The book was published in 2017 and many of my friends and relatives thought it would make a good movie.
So, in 2018, Kay and I embarked on a project to make a documentary film that we hoped would bring this tragic story to a wider audience. We found and interviewed nine Athenia survivors who were children when their ship was sunk.
With a lot of help and guidance from some very talented San Diego filmmakers (especially our director/producer Meghan Courtney), we put together a one-hour, made-for-TV documentary, which we titled “Athenia’s Last Voyage.”
We completed the film at the end of April this year, and now we are preparing to scale our next mountain — the film distribution process. Kay and I can’t recommend submerging oneself in the filmmaking business as a sensible retirement strategy, but it has been a fun, if exhausting, ride for us.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My work in newsrooms and corporate communications was very rewarding, both financially and in terms of job satisfaction. My journey into filmmaking has been much more challenging, though quite stimulating, in many ways. Athenia Productions LLC sounds like it could be a big movie production company, but it is just Kay and me.
We are each other’s editor, sounding board, and support staff. We have become familiar with terms like sizzle reel, licensing rights, picture-lock, and, most importantly, post-production (where, apparently, almost any mistake can be fixed). Among the benefits of learning so much on the fly, has been working with talented people who are half our age.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe you can tell us more about your work next?
Making a film is all about collaboration. It’s finding people who are skilled at what they do and trusting them to bring your artistic ideas to fruition.
I would say I’m most proud of seeing how others have been able to realize a vision I had that was not too clearly defined when we started our project.
The only thing that sets me apart from others in this field is that I have come to it so late in life. I guess it just goes to prove you can accomplish anything you set your mind to do.
What makes you happy?
Time spent with family and friends, visiting interesting destinations, or just engaging in conversation.
Personal connections with people you love, and respect are deeply rewarding because they transcend time and distance. Knowing you have people you can depend on, people who care about you, and for whom you care, makes life worth living.
Contact Info:
- Website: atheniaslastvoyage.com
