A Hero Honoring a Hero

Featuring:
Linn County Rural Electric Cooperative & South Dakota Cooperative
Dan Appelhans & office manager from South Dakota Cooperative

The Story:
Dan Appelhans, a journeyman lineman from Linn County Rural Electric Cooperative in Marion, Iowa, was one of a four man crew that traveled to South Dakota to assist with ice storm restoration in December of 2005. They worked on power restoration for 9 days, 16 hours a day, clearing lines of ice and replacing hundreds of broken poles and power lines. They worked continuously in freezing temperatures with 60 mph winds. These men leave behind their families and comforts of home in order to assist with power restoration to thousands of families. They know what this means to not only the people that they are "turning the lights" on for, but for the Cooperative that is affected, and the linemen that work for that Cooperative. Whenever anyone says something about their efforts, they always respond, "Just doing my job", but to me and thousands of others, they are Heros.

As these men were working diligently with lineman from the South Dakota Cooperative, they found out that the South Dakota Cooperative's office manager had been killed in Iraq. I would like to share an excerpt of an email we received from the CFC Regional Vice President.

Yesterday, one of the linemen from Linn County REC, Marion, IA who had been working storm restoration on B-Y's system for a number of days, stopped a B-Y employee and handed him a wad of bills. He told the B-Y employee to "give the bills to the Office Manager's wife so she can buy some Christmas presents for their kids". The employee accepted the bills and gave them to the CEO. When the CEO unfolded the bills he found $50 that the Linn County lineman - tired and cold himself from the tough work at B-Y - had taken out of his own pocket and given to a stranger to help a fellow cooperative employee family in need. That's who we are -- family!

To me, Dan Appelhans was a Hero honoring a Hero.

Submitted by: Johnna Nunemaker, Linn County Rural Electric Cooperative

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