Life-saver makes his day, 80 years later
EARLY,
Iowa -- It's sunny and clear this Tuesday in Northwest Iowa, the
15th day of November, 2011. Ed Schramm, anxious and content, readies
for a basketball quadruple-header.
Journal photo by Tim Gallagher. Ed Schramm, of Early, Iowa, watches a middle school basketball game on Tuesday. He carefully records stats at most every game he attends.
I sit with Schramm at midcourt, row one, as the Ridge View Raptors'
seventh-graders battle Woodbury Central at 4 o'clock.
Schramm scribbles the score at each quarter break,
weaving comments about bank shots and World War II around one
another, often in the same fast-break sentence.
"I enjoy watching the kids play ball, whether they're
seventh-graders or college kids," Schramm says.
The 1942 Early High School grad, a cager in his prep days, traded
sneakers for work boots after high school. A draft notice reached
his mailbox in Alaska in 1943 as he crushed rock for the Alaska
Highway.
Schramm jots the first-quarter score in the upper-left corner of
his program: 5-4, in favor of the visitors.
It's a no-no to start sentences with digits. I will anyway, as
Schramm crunches a lifetime of numbers for me.
515 days: Schramm's tour of duty in World War II in a combat
area, mostly Italy. Came home with nary a scratch. Operated a rock
crusher and road grader. Saw Pope Pius XII.
33-plus months: Service in the U.S. Army.
33 years: Volunteer duty with Early Fire Department.33 years:
Employment at Payless Cashways, a lumberyard in this Sac County
town.
29 years ago: Heart attack.
28 years ago: At his doctor's request, Schramm begins walking. One
man's quiet, heart-healthy brigade.
30,200 miles: The distance he walked from 1982 to 2010, much of it
chasing one white ball about two golf courses — Lake Creek Country
Club near Storm Lake and Spring Lake Golf Course at Lake View, Iowa.
One year ago, his walking days became numbered. The cartilage in
one knee about gone, Schramm declined surgery. He now leans on a
gnarled wooden cane. It supports the program on which he jots the
final score for these seventh-graders: Visitors 36, Raptors 18.
The cane accompanies Schramm north 15 miles as he steps up to the
top bleacher at Siebens Fieldhouse at Buena Vista University. Buena
Vista's basketball team duels Gustavus Adolphus, the first of dozens
of nights Schramm will spend in a gym this season.
98-96 final. The pen stays busy with such big numbers. The bigger
one belongs to the visitor.
88. Another sizable digit. Schramm celebrates it Friday. Wouldn't
have seen age 8 were it not for Pauline (Thorpe) Sorenson.
Sorenson, 96, and a resident of North Lake Manor in Storm Lake,
figures it was 1931. She traveled with her parents from Storm Lake
to Doon, Iowa, as they hauled gravel. She watched the children of
workers each day.
"The kids were swimming in a pit near Doon, one that had a
dropoff," she says. "Eddie went in and we couldn't see him. I swam
to him as he came up. I was able to drag him to shore."
By chance, the two reconnect in 2003. His first comment: "You
saved my life."
Sorenson recalls seeing a relative of Schramm last week at the
nursing home. She asks if Eddie has a birthday. Everyone does.
"I figured it might be May, or some other time," Sorenson says.
"When his relative told me Eddie was born on Nov. 18, 1923, I wrote
it on an old thank you card here on my stack of clutter."
The note prompts her to mail a birthday greeting.
Ed Schramm looks up from the scoring ledger at the top of his
page. As life's stories go, his gravel pit catastrophe has a
buzzer-beating finish.
"She saved my life 80 years ago," he says. "Got a birthday card
from her today." |
The
Odebolt UMC invited the Early UMC to worship together with them on Sunday,
August 28th at 10:00 a.m. at Prairie Pedlar near Odebolt. A contributed meal was
held following the service.
