There were thousands of deaths around the United States this holiday weekend. Some were expected…some were not. We had one of the second variety strike our Midwest Communications family. Our station manager, Brett Lucht died in a drowning accident while celebrating the Independence Day weekend with his family. He had just turned 50. There are so many thoughts that swirl when someone you know passes suddenly. You think of potential unfulfilled. You think of what the person's last thoughts were as the situation became reality. But mostly you think of the children. I didn't know Brett that well outside of the office but I can say with some degree of certainty that his last thoughts were on his family. He doted on his wife and three daughters. Many of the discussion we had around the office revolved around his daughters athletic endeavors. He had a recent Facebook post that talked about how he missed (during these pandemic times) those times on the road for soccer and basketball. And he would never take them for granted again. His oldest daughter Natalie posted this on Saturday…
“Dear dad:
I never in a million years thought you would be leaving us so soon. It is hard for me to understand why you had to go, but I have to believe that your wings were ready, even if my heart was not. I have so much pain in my heart, I feel lost. You were the best man I have ever known. Thank you for everything you were able to provide for mom, Lindsey, Emily and I. You gave us so much and added so much to our lives just by simply being our father. You were the best girl dad ever. You were a father that loved his daughters more than anything in this world and you proved that to us everyday. You were the crazy, fun, and outgoing dad that made everyone around you laugh. So many people had gotten the pleasure to know you and your goofy self.
However, you were supposed to be here for so much more: I wanted you to see me graduate college and watch me become a nurse, I wanted you to watch lindsey step foot on the soccer field again after just being cleared from her ACL surgery, I wanted you to see Lindsey and Emily graduate high school & college, I wanted you to be here to take us to more packer games and bucks games, I wanted you to be here for more family trips, I wanted you watch us grow up and make you proud, I wanted you to walk me down the aisle one day, and I wanted you to make an awesome grandpa eventually. I wanted you to be here for everything. How is it that we won’t be able to go on lunch dates anymore, or text and call each other every day, or finish our Netflix shows together, or eat family meals together, or all of us sitting on you and moms bed laughing and talking, or literally anything that we did with you???
Life isn’t fair and I’m so broken and I just wish I could see you again, hug you, hold your hand, and tell you that I love you again. I love you so much it hurts. But I also want you to know that mom, Lindsey, Emily and I are going to be okay in due time. We are going to lean on each other and I am going to make sure that we will be okay. We have so much family support behind us, and most of all we have Him watching over us. My faith will get me through this and I know you will always be with me. I will make you proud. I love you daddy
“-Natalie Lucht.
You can bet his other daughters felt the same way.
I last saw Brett on Wednesday of last week. He was walking into the station as I was leaving and he had his gym bag with him. He was a regular “noon-ball” hoops player at the Y and was looking forward to getting back at it after a long layoff. Little did I know I would never see him again.
An excellent story from SI on the 1918 pandemic and the sports of the day…..
Like you, we had no idea when it would end.
Like you, we were late to quarantine and quick to reemerge.
Like you, we wrestled with the “essentialness” of baseball.
Relive Edward F. Martin's journey from a century ago
Six Badger players have tested postitive for COVID 19. Read the story
here
The Bucks have closed their practice facility after the Friday COVID19 testing. No word on who, if any, tested positive. It will remain closed until they leave for Orlando on Thursday.
I read that the WIAA is considering moving football, boys soccer and volleyball to the spring while moving track to the fall. I can't tell you how much I hate this idea.
If the current battle for social justice accomplishes nothing else, at least the loss of revenue is forcing the odious Dan Snyder to change the abhorrent name of his NFL team. It's about damn time. It's too bad it took Fed Ex and others to threaten Snyder's bottom line before he decided to do the right thing.
Some new music from David Gilmour.
Covers Of The Day (Happy Birthday to one of my faves…Nanci Griffith turns 67 today)
Quotes of The Day
“It’s really mind-blowing that multiple cabinet level officials decided Trump was unfit for office and instead of taking any constructive cooperative action they each left individually and worked to maximize their book royalties.”-Matthew Yglesias
“Just a reminder that every other wealthy nation also guarantees health care to all of their people, except us.”-Stephanie Kelton
https://twitter.com/projectlincoln/status/12790021…
“The one thing most likely to undercut public confidence in the integrity of the ballot is the false narrative being peddled by the attorney general and the president.”-USA Today
https://usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/07/04/atto…
“Racism is used by those with wealth and power to divide those with neither, so they won’t see where all the wealth and power have gone.”-Robert Reich
“Trump has clarified the meaning of 2020. In his corner are racism, corruption, incompetence, pestilence and fascism. In the other are people who oppose that shit.”-Walter Schaub
“Most disheartening thing about the last 3.5 years for me, besides finding out that 35% of the population are racists, is that Republicans are so evil and corrupt that even obvious racist rhetoric doesn't get a response from them. I will never forgive these people.”-Sundae Gurl
“Last year, the Republican National Convention began cutting checks to a former producer of NBC's Celebrity Apprentice who was accused of having, as one contestant put it, “all the dirt” on Donald Trump.”-Kyle Griffin
https://thedailybeast.com/the-rnc-is-paying-a-form…
“Donald Trump spoke for 42 minutes and 13 seconds last night but just couldn’t find the time to condemn Vladimir Putin for offering bounties for the killing of American troops.”-Tammy Duckworth
“My take on the Rushmore speech: Trump is like a man who’s about to lose his house to the bank — so, out of pique and self-loathing, he torches it. On his way out of office, he’s burning our house down”-Ron Fournier
“Never forget the only reason Trump’s still in office, is because the GOP traitors in the Senate kept him there. Vote them out.”-Scott Dworkin
“Just speaking purely as a writer for a moment…Trump's speech tonight is horrible. It's like a fourth grade book report read straight off Wikipedia.”-Don Winslow
“BREAKING: Crooked politician who has abused the nation’s governing institutions to enrich and empower himself and his friends frets about proposals to prevent crooked politicians from abusing the nation’s governing institutions to enrich and empower themselves and their friends. “-John Nichols
“Let’s be real. Trump had to have known they were going after Ghislaine Maxwell. So he tried to fire SDNY’s Geoffrey Berman, and replace him with a puppet so he could cover it all up.”-Scott Dworkin
“Y’all are acting like you’ve never seen a family of pyschopathic drug addicts occupy the WH in a time of a global pandemic and sweat it out as their connections to a global sex trafficking industry get exposed by the SDNY before?”-Noel Casler
“The president of the United States reads Nielsen's weekly TV ratings more closely than he does his daily intelligence brief.”-Richard Stengel
“The central question in a complicated world is whom to trust. Once that decision has been made, everything else follows. The tragedy of American politics in 2020 is that many Americans trusted an untrustworthy man. And all of us will pay for it.”-Ezra Klein
Why is Trump fighting for a job he's not even doing?
