Last week started out tough for a number of residents of the Powell community.
The Northwest College community saw two of its student/athletes in the hospital after a bear mauling the …
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Last week started out tough for a number of residents of the Powell community.
The Northwest College community saw two of its student/athletes in the hospital after a bear mauling the weekend before.
On Monday, the beet farming community lost a farmer who had been a big part of the community.
Then the Powell community stepped up.
Support poured in for the wrestlers involved in the mauling Oct. 15. College administrators helped out, people donated to a fund set up by the college for them, and their coach was flooded with messages of support for his wrestlers.
And after hearing about the death of Lyle Bjornestad, fellow beet farmers resolved to help his family by finishing the harvest of his beet field.
Powell is a great community, but the true special nature shines through most in adversity, as was clearly the case last week.
We should all be proud of what our neighbors can do when others are most in need. The four wrestlers involved in the mauling showed that for each other as well. When sophomore Brady Lowry was attacked by the grizzly bear, his friend and teammate Kendell Cummings rushed to help. When his efforts to yell and throw sticks and stones didn’t work, the 19-year-old ran up to a fully grown grizzly bear and pulled its ear in an attempt to get the bear off his friend.
Later, the two other wrestlers in the group, August Harrison and Orrin Jackson, could think of nothing else besides going toward where the bear had attacked Lowry and then Cummings to try and save their friend. If that doesn’t show both courage and the love between friends, I don’t know what else would.
For the community to then step up and help the group only continued that idea of what a community is all about: To step up and help those in need.
We’re all in this together. The trials and tribulations of last week proved that.