UFH: Eric Rasmussen

[Justin]

Congratulations Eric!! This has been a long time coming. For as long as I have been in FIRST, almost 10 years now, Eric was always the behind the scenes "man of mystery" type of guy everyone knew if you had a problem you call Eric. I think legend is really the right word. I've always thought of Eric as kind of the bedrock of FIRST we've all watched people come and go but the day Eric Rasmussen moves on will be a troubling day for FIRST indeed.

One of my favorite Eric memories is the first Bash at the Beach in 2000, it was a really low-key off season with lots of unique quirks. Eric was there as a ref and they ran out of black balls and couldn't find any extras. As I recall Eric called for a Sharpie and I have a picture (which I will post in the gallery later tonight) of him actually coloring a yellow ball black with a Sharpie.

Thank you Eric for all you've done for so many of us.

Justin

P.S. Mentioning Rumble at the Rock makes you truly old school.

[Vince]

Congratulations Eric.

One more Eric story....

Midway through the 1999 season of the floppies there was a discussion to add the third team to the alliance for the finals. The idea arose the previous weekend in Hartford and the discussion on what to do was being finalized at the next weekend's event in Detroit. As the finals neared on SAT AM Dean and Woodie decided to go for it and add the 3rd team to the alliance for the finals.

But how would it be done? How could the alliance Captain be noted? How could the scoring system display the new team?

True to form, Eric had thought this all through the few days he wasn't on the road that week and had it all sorted out, including an updated scoring system, a script to explain the change and markers for the alliance Captains.

Oh, for the good old days when Eric could simply do it all......