Putting the Pieces Back Together
The following article, written by Kristen Moulton, appeared in the Oct. 16, 2005 edition of The Salt Lake Tribune under the headline, "Putting the pieces back together." It is reprinted with permission of the newspaper.
Utah State University plans a community-wide memorial service to honor the memories of those who died from the Sept. 26 crash on Monday, Nov. 7. Details of the service will be issued by the university soon.
By Kristen Moulton
The Salt Lake Tribune
The Salt Lake Tribune
LOGAN - When eight agriculture students and their instructor were killed in a van rollover last month, they left a lot undone on campus. Sixteen broken and partly dismantled tractors, to be exact.
On Saturday, nearly three weeks after the tragedy, alumni of Utah State University's agriculture technology club - which lost half its members in the Sept. 26 crash west of Tremonton - came back to Logan to see what could be done about the tractors the young men left behind.
The scheduled start time for the work party was 10 a.m. Most of the 33 alumni - now mostly farm implement mechanics, salesmen and farmers from Twin Falls, Idaho, to Fort Bridger, Wyo. - began showing up at 8 a.m. They soon were holding wrenches and welders, and fumbling around for grease rags.
Cade Jones, a former president of the Ag Tech Club, traveled more than 200 miles from his home in Huntington near Price to help fix the students' tractors. "I wouldn't have cared if it was 1,000," he said.
"This is typical of these guys," said Keith Hatch of Logan, an instructor in agricultural mechanics from 1967 to 1990. "They'll come together and rub shoulders as long as you don't ask them to talk."
Since 1967, USU has provided much of the region's formal training in agricultural mechanics. Most of the students grew up on farms, and they end up working for farm implement dealers as mechanics or salesmen, or they return to the family farm.
The students spend class time and a four-hour weekly work party fixing broken farm machinery, some of it donated to or purchased by the Ag Tech Club and much of it brought by the students from their family farms.
The pieces they sell help finance a trip every other year to the Midwest, where the students watch farm equipment being manufactured.
The day of the accident, the eight students had left the tractors on campus behind and were on a field trip to the Pocatello Valley near Snowville, where they saw a state-of-the-art combine harvesting safflower.
On the way home, the van they were in blew a tire and rolled off Interstate-84 west of Tremonton, killing instructor Evan Parker as well as the eight students.
Two students survived, including Robbie Petersen of Elwood, who was released from an Ogden hospital on Friday and was at Saturday's work party. Jared Nelson remains in stable condition at Ogden Regional Medical Center.
Petersen, using a wheelchair because he has two broken legs, said he wasn't about to stay away.
In fact, he said he was "going bonkers" at home as others chopped corn for silage.
"Gosh dang, you guys, I ought to be doing something," he told current Ag Tech members Coby Champneys and Jared Davis, who were outside hand-sanding pieces of a 1950s-era tractor that was to be reassembled and painted by the end of the day.
"I've been in the hospital for 2 1/2 weeks. I don't want to be sitting here."
Soon, Petersen was holding a screwdriver and taking the lights off the front fender piece.
Champneys, vice president of the Ag Tech Club, said it was great to see the alumni make progress on the tractors his classmates could not finish. "It was hard coming out every day and seeing their tractors as they left them."
Champneys said that although Saturday's labors helped, most of the tractors still need parts and some time-intensive work.
One tractor alumni were laboring over belongs to the family of Bear River City resident Justin Huggins, who died in the crash.
"We're going to get that one real nice," Champneys said.
Marlowe Goble, a Logan orthopedic surgeon who also teaches at University of Utah medical school, was there with a wrench in hand, wearing his friend Parker's work smock over his scrubs. Goble has provided tractors for the program over the years, and is considered an honorary member of the Ag Tech Club.
Another who came to Saturday's work party was Scott Fuhriman of Tremonton, an alumnus whose own son, Dusty, was killed in the rollover.
Fuhriman especially wanted to work on the Massey Ferguson that had been his son's project this fall.
"It was a good time in his life. You knew he'd found something he liked," Fuhriman said of his only son.
Ag Tech student Tyler Speth was a shop manager for the Oct. 15 Ag Tech Work Party.
Alumni arrived from throughout Utah, Idaho and Wyoming to help with class projects left unfinished by crash victims.
Crash survivor Robbie Petersen, who is using a wheelchair while his broken legs heal, prepares a fender and headlight from a '50s-era Ford tractor for painting. The other survivor, Jared Nelson, is in stable condition and continues his recovery at Ogden Regional Medical Center.
Ag Tech alum Cade Jones offered his effort and expertise.
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