This Ross became a Friend

You’ve all seen the pictures of Kelsey surrounded by sunflowers in our e-edition this week and online this week, if you’re reading or watching.
We memorialize her in sunflowers because she loved them. We have them painted on walls and on art that hangs in the house. We have them as decorations around the patios of our homes and on our comforters. We’re surrounded with them, so we’re surrounded with her memory.
We blew past the sixth year of her death on Friday and I was sitting in the wake of a Des Moines snowstorm having trouble breathing as I walked up the hill toward the Casey’s Center. It’s cheaper and easier to just park on the city street with the new QSR Des Moines Parking program. I think I saved 38 cents parking south of Buzzard Billies. But I lost the savings when I decided that would be a good place to grab a late dinner Thursday.
Friday morning, after helping a van full of cheerleaders get out of the hotel parking lot, I made the treacherous drive to downtown Des Moines to see Ren Watson and Baylor Ferreira wrestling on day 2 of the IHSAA state tournament.
After parking, I grabbed a banana and headed up the hill to the arena. It was fine until I got about a block away and this derecho of a wind out of the north came cooking down the west sidewalk. I had a full length golf shirt and a spring jacket on. I didn’t see the storm coming on my phone. The damn thing can do everything in the world except tell me to bring a coat and gloves.
About halfway up the hill on the west side, with everyone else in the world walking down the hill, my lungs almost froze and the huge satellite dishes I have for ears on the side of my head started to crack like those new freeze dried candy things. I imagined seeing my ears turn to powder and blow off my head. I turned around about three times to take the wind at my back, but kept bumping into people. Taylor told me after the fact, that’s what selfie mode is for.
Smartest kid in the room.
I finally got to the top the of the hill and entered the media entrance which was inhumanely placed at the NW entrance so I had no choice but to make the Everest-like trek up the hill. When I walked into the warmth of the arena, I almost peed myself with the tension release.
I got in the elevator. I took a deep, warm breath and was back to thinking about the day.
I went to the media room and this time there was plenty of room at the tables. Thursday I had to share with someone who left their coats at a table to reserve it, but never showed up at all until the coats were gone. I think in a fit of rage for having to share, he dropped chocolate on my keyboard. Someone did.
Anyway, I sat down Friday in a corner where I could just be me, by myself, and process. I started to get sad again, which I prefer to do alone, and this guy comes in and with about 30 table spots open, and sits right next to me.
“This spot taken?”
“No,” I said without looking up.
He sat down and extended a hand and said his name was Ross.
I looked up and it was Tom Walljasper’s doppleganger. Look it up.
I locked onto him for a second and smiled. I introduced myself and we started a casual ‘nice-to-meet-you’ conversation. I can work a room most of the time, but on this day, I wasn’t expecting to socialize.
I would imagine that just about everyone reading this knows Tom Walljasper. And this isn’t name dropping. This column is supposed to be about the people in this community who impact our lives.
Tom and his family are in that group that know real tragedy. Real trauma. That’s all I’ll say about that. But he quietly came into my life about five years ago. We don’t hang out and ride unicycles all over the damn place high fiving each other and throwing bags at holes. But we do get together for lunch once or twice a year and just hang.
He may not know, and I think he does, but it means the world to me. It’s a hand in the dark, a pull up a hill, a guy at your side. Those are important, and now this Ross dude will be in that group and I’ll probably never have Amigos with him. But he helped on a day, when help wasn’t wanted…just needed. And he didn’t even know it.
Here’s what I know. Strength comes from the weirdest places and at the weirdest times. I’ll make it home today because a stranger thought, “I’ll just sit next to this guy.”
Thanks, Ross.
And speaking of sitting next to people, you all need to get to Keokuk Friday night to watch what happens at Wright Fieldhouse when the all-of-a-sudden spunky Bloodhounds and Nolan Guzman get after Jaxon Clark for the third time this year. Keokuk beat Fort Madison by more than 40 at the Fieldhouse earlier this year, but the Hounds cut that to 10 in the Hound Dome when Guzman blew up the FMHS single-game scoring mark with 51. That environment could be off the charts – But that’s Beside the Point.
Chuck Vandenberg is editor and co-owner of Pen City Current and can be reached at Charles.V@PenCityCurrent.com.