Obituaries

Robert L. Sansom Mining Company President

Robert L. Sansom, 67, a former EPA official who became president of the mining company Virginia Vermiculite, died Dec. 21 at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. He had leukemia.

In the early 1970s, Dr. Sansom was the Environmental Protection Agency's assistant administrator for air and water programs.

He later founded energy and environmental consulting firms before helping start Virginia Vermiculite in Louisa, Va., in 1979. He remained company president until his death.

Robert Lewis Sansom was born in Johnson City, Tenn. He was a 1964 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, where he was first in his class, and received a master's degree in economics from Georgetown University in 1965.

In the late 1960s, he earned a doctorate in economics from Oxford University in England and was a White House Fellow with a specialty in national security affairs. He later served under national security adviser Henry Kissinger.

Earlier, he had been a recipient of Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships.

Dr. Sansom had been a resident of Stanardsville, in central Virginia, for more than 25 years. He also had a residence in Arlington County until recently and raised black Angus cattle and soybeans on a farm in Madison County, Va.

His marriage to Sharron Smith Sansom ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife, Karen Reid Sansom of Stanardsville; a daughter from his first marriage, Sarah Williams of Guilford, Conn.; two sons from his second marriage, Todd Sansom and Tyler Sansom, both of Nashville; three brothers; and three grandchildren.

-- Adam Bernstein