With this in mind, I thought we need to get to know David and find out more about him. I thought about our Third Thursday Lunch group and how we traveled up to the Student Union for lunch in August of 25, and began to kick around inviting David to join us.

 

After digging through some Ames alumni, I got in touch with Jeff Nelson who not only knew David, but was with Student Services at ISU and had a planned event for April 25th on Central Campus and David and his wife were committed to stop at the event.

 

I called Dana Bentzinger and got him to agree to go up with me to meet David and extend an invitation to lunch with brothers. On Saturday, April 25th, Dana and I were at the event and approached David and Katie Cook as they arrived. We introduced ourselves and I presented a written invitation to David, asking him to consider it and based on his schedule, get back to me. They were both friendly and open to the idea. I waited two weeks, and not hearing from David, I sent him an email. He came back to me the same day and confirmed he was very interested and asked me to set something up with his social secretary (he gave me her contact info and copied her on the email he sent back to me).

 

I wanted to get this done during the summer, so we worked out available dates and selected, Wednesday, July 8th with the location being at the Ames Golf & Country Club. On May 15th we had event set. Pow helped me with getting into the Country Club, and then we were on our way.

 

Sharing the news with the Third Thursday guys gave us a starting point and we had 14 brothers committed. I spent the next month and a half emailing, texting, and calling people. And I had plenty of help and support. A week before the event we were right at 50 people, and with the 4th Holiday I was getting ready to cut it off but decided we'd let it ride.

 

On Wednesday, July 8th we had 47 brothers show up, and we had 4 individuals call with their regret that day. We had brothers from Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, and Iowa attend. We had a planned agenda, but thanks to fast service during the lunch David didn't give us 5-8 minutes of talking, but rather about 23 minutes including a question answering time.

 

We had one table of brothers at the front with 7 guys who were all in the house with David (he sat with them). We had brothers from Pledge Class years 1965 to 2017. We had great service and I believe everyone enjoyed the event. In follow up thank you to David, he responded with two asks; how could he help with fund raising for the house and could he and his wife have dinner with the undergraduate chapter sometime. I've passed both those requests on to people who can be in charge.

 

Finally, I'm really glad the idea came to me and that I did something with it. I extend a thank you to everyone who participated, and to the following brothers for their help, Dana Bentzinger, Jim Black, Mark Zirkelbach, Phil Corbin, Dennis Harding, Mark Power, Kurt Risk, Jeff Nelson, Larry Crabb, Jerry McClelland, and Mike Risk.

 

The End Rodger C