Problems Reformatting SSD on mid 2015 Retina 15" MBP
Turns out the obvious answer was always right in front of me.  I simply did not know enough about the changes made recently to move away from partitions and embrace containers and volumes.  After more study/research I decided I still prefer keeping my data completely away from OS, and therefore partitions over containers for my way of working (bought 1st computer in 1982, built/used/upgraded/repaired numerous PCs until purchased 1st Apple in 2012).
So, I created a 16Gig bootable thumb drive and followed Apple's instructions at  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372.  Worked like a charm.