Death at the Packing Plant: The 1941 Killing of Ferdinand Sandry

Workplace ‘kidding’ at a Dennison meat packing plant in the spring of 1941 sparked a fatal explosion of violence.

Frank McGuire (1895-1955), born in Tuscarawas County, was a long-time resident of the Dennison area with a diverse work history. He married Emma Robinson (1898-1970) in 1914 and supported his family through various roles including clay miner, machinist, and local retail grocer. However, his professional life was occasionally punctuated by a volatile temper. While operating his grocery store in 1928, he was fined for an assault on a ten-year-old boy. By the spring of 1941, the 46-year-old McGuire worked as a handyman and fireman at the H.G. Clark Provision Company meat packing plant off Stillwater Avenue in Dennison.

Frank had a younger co-worker named Ferdinand “Fred” Sandry (1911-1941) at the meat packing plant. Sandry was born in Norway, Michigan to Austrian immigrants. Sandry moved to Ohio as a youth and followed his father’s path into labor, establishing himself as a butcher and meat packer by the age of 18. Sandry married Alice Jean Allensworth (1920-2008) in October 1939, and at the time of the 1940 census, the 29-year-old was living in Uhrichsville and working alongside McGuire at the Clark plant.

The lives of these two men collided tragically on the morning of March 4, 1941. Before the work day officially began at 7:00 a.m., Sandry reportedly began kidding McGuire about his failure to clean a workbench the previous evening. Enraged by the teasing, McGuire retrieved a 20-inch wooden gambrel stick, a heavy tool used for hanging meat, and struck Sandry over the head. Despite the severe blow, Sandry managed to fight back briefly before the plant foreman intervened to separate the two men.

Following the fight, the plant proprietor ordered the injured Sandry home, but he soon became violently ill and was rushed to Twin City Hospital. He died at 12:45 p.m. that same day from a hemorrhage caused by a fractured skull. McGuire was arrested at the plant that afternoon and he initially showed no emotion upon hearing of the death, telling authorities that Sandry was “always riding me and shooting off his mouth”. However, after a visit from his wife at the county jail, McGuire reportedly broke down and signed a full confession.

Legal proceedings moved swiftly, with McGuire initially facing a second-degree murder charge. A grand jury later returned a more lenient indictment for manslaughter, to which McGuire pleaded guilty in May 1941. He was sentenced to an indefinite term of one to fifteen years in the Ohio Penitentiary, and the judge noted that the jury had been very kind to the defendant given the evidence of malice. The court’s decision followed intense community interest, including a petition from Sandry’s sister and hundreds of residents who strongly opposed any leniency for McGuire.

McGuire served his sentence at the London Prison Farm and was paroled only three years later in May 1944. He returned to his home on Dennison and spent his final years working as a small farmer. His life came to an end on June 6, 1955, when he suffered a fatal heart attack while working in a field near his home. He was buried in Union Cemetery, leaving behind a legacy marked by a single, fatal moment of workplace rage that left behind a pregnant widow to raise Ferdinand Sandry’s child.

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© Noel B. Poirier, 2025.