During the second play of the game, Trice’s collarbone was broken. Trice insisted he was all right and returned to the game. In the third quarter, while attempting to tackle a University of Minnesota ball carrier by throwing a roll block, Trice was trampled by three Minnesota players. Although he claimed to be fine, Trice was removed from the game and sent to a Minneapolis hospital. The doctors declared him fit to travel and he returned by train to Ames with his teammates. On October 8, 1923, Trice died from hemorrhaged lungs and internal bleeding as a result of the injuries sustained during the game.

Trice’s funeral was held at the Iowa State College’s central campus in Ames on October 16, 1923, with 4,000 students and faculty members in attendance.

As a result of his death, ISU did not renew their contract to play against Minnesota after the 1924 game. They would not play again until 1989.

There a song entitled It’s Going to be a Red Letter Day. Well, it is not only a Red Letter Day, it has been a Red Letter Week. Trice’s birth, the sale of Joel & Molly’s house, and the fact that Ryan was retained by his employer make it one of the best if not the best weeks in our lives.

Item #2 is Joel & Molly finally have closed on their house so that is great news.

Item #3 son Ryan has been retained by Principal in a new position with the company. He was scheduled to be laid off a week from tomorrow – so that too is great news. It certainly is a great birthday present for him since his birthday is tomorrow.

Minot, ND suffered major flooding this past spring and summer. One may think how could this area have such a flood when there are really no major rivers here? However, let me tell you they were hit with a good one. Quite a bit of Minot sits in what you might call a “bowl” and in this “bowl” is at least one small river, actually what I would call a good size creek. This past spring this small river became a BIG river and flooded nearly 4000 homes. Some of these homes had in excess of 7 feet of water in them for several weeks.

The clean-up process is still going on and from what I can see it will be going on for quite some time. However, with winter coming on the clean-up process is rapidly coming to an end and the “buttoning up” of the damaged homes is starting. “Buttoning Up” is simply securing the homes from the weather in order to prevent any further damage to the house. Then next spring they can begin the rebuilding process.

This week I have been supervising a group of AmeriCorps volunteers who are based out of Vinton, Iowa. These young men and women are doing an awesome job and so far it has been a pleasure to work with them.

I will be helping close up for winter the damaged homes there. It has already been interesting; There are so many displaced resident, numerous oil field workers, and closed rv parks due to the flooding it was really hard to find a place to stay. However, less than an hour after being placed on a waiting list I received a call letting me know that I had a place to stay.

Sunday’s church service at CrossWay was quite an emotional event since 4 of the members from their Tuscaloosa Team spoke of their experiences doing disaster relief work in Alabama followed by power point presentations. After church the CrossWay team treated us to a meal and more great conversation at a local Perkins.

We left Davenport on July 7 drove over 4000 miles in the 24 days we were gone spent over 1600 in fuel and it was all worth it. We enjoyed 8 days in PA with our good friends Deb & Barry, 4 days with my sister Sandy and 12 days in Tuscaloosa, AL helping with the tornado clean-up there. During our time we were blessed to work with and meet some pretty awesome people.

Once we get unpack and settled back in I will post some photos.

 Tuesday morning, July 19, we put some deck wash on her deck, did some shopping for accessories for John’s room and in the afternoon we stained the deck we washed in the morning. Once again the Good Lord was with us since literally with in 5 minutes of staining their deck we had a downpour. Since the stain we used was an oil base and it didn’t appear to have affected our work.

 We left Mt. Sidney the morning of July 20 and headed for Lake Lurleen State Park our home until we return home. This park sits on a beautiful lake just outside the booming metropolis of Coker, AL. Since it is almost 600 miles from Sandy’s place to Coker we decided to stop for the night at a KOA just outside Sweetwater, TN which was kind of nice since we had not had and cable or internet for over a week. Lake Lurleen is the same park we stayed at earlier this summer while working in Tuscaloosa so it kind of felt like coming home.

We arrived at Lake Lurleen on July 21 and after we got the trailer settled in we drove to SOMA Church in Holt to meet with the gentleman in charge of the restoration project there. We learned that despite much progress since June there is still a lot left to be done before rebuilding can begin. Part of the reason there is so much left to do before they can begin to rebuild, is because the health department now requires that any vegetation that is leaning more the 30 degrees must be removed 150 feet from the property line before they will allow any rebuilding to begin. Since we left our chain saw (the one we bought back in May when Tom first came down) at home because it pretty much bit the dust from over work. Tom bought a new 24 inch pro grade chain saw. Imagine that!

On July 22 and 23 Tom got the chance to try out his new toy and found it worked quite satisfactorily. As always on trips like this we meet and work with new people this time has been no exception. We spent both days working with a group from Lebanon, TN. This was interesting since Lebanon is where Tom worked in January and February of this year. On Saturday night we had dinner at Wintzell’s Oyster House in Northport, AL. This was a must sometime during our stay here so Tom so he could enjoy their Low Country Boil one more time.