Dear Dan, my older brother who is in poor health, so I sent him this thank you letter while he could still read and appreciate it.

I was thinking this morning of all the things you had done for me over the years and  thought I had better thank you while you could still read them.

1.Thank you for the farm set you gave me for Christmas when I was about six years old. I think my sister and I wore that thing out, playing with it so much.

2. Thanks for the wooden wagon with the removable side racks. Russ gave me some wild rides in that and I hauled a lot of wood into the house with it.. Russ also pushed me into the glass door of the book case in the front room, we both got in a lot of trouble for that. Russ said it was my fault for not steering straight. Dad figured out right away and punished us both equally.

3. Thanks for the toboggan for Christmas. I remember mom sent me to bed early, as if I could go to sleep anyway.  I was laying there and heard you go out to the granary to get my present. I spent the next hour trying to think of what you might have got me. All the rides down the straw stack with that and all the trips hauling oats over from the granary to the silo room for calf feed.

4.Thanks for taking me squirrel  and partridge hunting. For making the cleaning of the game an anatomy lesson for me that I never forgot. For making a big deal about the partridges digestive sack and what they were eating and for sending their tail feathers into the DNR.

5.Thanks for letting Annetta and I check your weasel trap line a few times. I felt like Jack London in the arctic woods. For letting me watch you skin weasel and muskrats and telling me they used the weasel hides for rich men’s underwear. I was in high school before I caught on to that one.

6.Thanks for letting me watch you harness the team and for teaching me how to talk to and handle horses.

7. Thanks for all the fair trips with calf projects you helped me with. That was how I got my Christmas money every year. Those Jerseys calves always got a blue ribbon as there was little competition in their class at the fair.

8.Thanks for all the fishing trips, especially in that little old pogo boat on Beaver Lake. It always leaked but that added to the excitement as well as acting as a  a live well for the perch to swim around in..

9. Thanks for being a good teacher in deer season, along with dad. You taught me how to hunt right, safe, and to respect the woods and the animals.

10.Thanks  for all the football games you came to and all the support you gave me during my coaching career.You  even made it down to Madison for the State Finals game with New Berlin.

11. Thanks for the pheasant hunts and Sunday afternoons at Billion when I was teaching at Clintonville.

12. Thanks for the rabbit hunts you took me on and stops at the little farm by Medford. I will always remember your Beagle Mulligan’s chase of old Harry the rabbit.

13.Thanks  for driving me to Marshfield that first time I had my MRI for my pituitary tumor. The devotions the next morning were so special.

14.Thanks for all the pogo books and Freddie the Fox stories you read to me.. You always made the book and story come alive and your laughter was so contagious. I laughed because you laughed so hard.

15.Thanks  for teaching me about raising rabbits, ducks and turkeys even though the tom turkeys used to chase me and the goose would hiss and chase me out of the chicken coop.

16.Thanks for the stop overs at Ashland and for helping me move from Lake Holcombe up to Marengo.

17Thanks  for helping me clean up my rented trailer and move into town while teaching at Ashland.

18.Thanks for your part in raising two great daughters who became like daughters to me and a big part of my life.

19.Thanks for showing me how a Christian man should live his life for Christ. Your life was a huge example for me.

I am sure there were more things but these were the ones I remember most. Thanks for being such a great, big brother and role model to me. I really appreciate all you did for me.

Your younger brother Bob