The night before kickoff, our team’s President Tony Shafer was about 1/4 mile from his home, when he lost control of his car, spun out, and rolled over into a ditch.
He was killed instantly.
I am the Vice President of our team and my dad is President of our Parent advisory committee. Tony’s dad called my house at about 12:10 AM to inform us of the accident.
Right now, the entire team is pretty devastated and are taking a few days to recuperate. However come Wednesday, Robotics will truly begin.
On behalf of team 1629, I’d like to extend condolances to your entire team and his family. I’m very sorry such a horrible thing happened at such a usually happy time.
On behalf of team 2021, I extend our condolences. We will keep him and his family in our prayers. We wish the team the best of luck in this years season.
We are so sorry for your loss. You will find renewed purpose this year and there will be great days to come.
In that spirit, we wanted to share something with you that we were going to keep secret until the Championship. This timing seems better. A coach on our team, Bette Bridges, participates in geocasching. She found a “travel bug” in Mahspee, Ma. that asked to be returned to team 1622 at the Atlanta FIRST Championship. Your bug made it all the way to the East coast! We will take good care of your bug til then. See you in Atlanta…our best thoughts and wishes are with all members of your team.
I am sorry for the loss to your team as well as the loss to the first community. There has been too many losses of team members this past year in the first community.
My sincere condolences to the Shafer family, friends and the team. We lost our oldest son in late January of 2005 in the middle of the build season. Fortunately, the team was there to support us. They hung out at the house with my younger son (a team member) and we continued to build. It gave us something to hold on to. Reach out to his family, and honor him.