Robert Eugene Reed, born July 14, 1947, to Charles E. and Eloise Ruth (Armstrong) Reed in East Liverpool, Ohio. He passed away on October 19, 2021, at his home in Garretson. Interment will be at a later date in the South Dakota State Veterans Cemetery near Sioux Falls. He attended 1st thru 11th grade of school in East Liverpool. The family moved to Houston, Texas and he completed his high school and college programs there.
Drafted into the US Army, Robert served with honor as a senior combat medic with a combat armor unit in South Vietnam. Wounded in combat, he was most proud of caring for his fellow soldiers before tending to his own wounds. He was a good soldier, proud of his service and very proud of the flag.
After discharge from the Army, Robert attended nursing school and after graduation he trained in open heart and trauma surgery at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. Robert worked as a nurse for 40 years with most of the time in the surgical operating room.
In 1969 he married Carla Chance of Carthage, South Dakota. They had four children: Steven, Anne, Scott, and Joshua. The marriage ended in 1991. In 1995 he married Mary Skinner of Sturgis, South Dakota. In 1999, he adopted her two children: Carly and Matthew. They were married until 2010. In 2014 he married Gretchen Ann Sturgis of Sterling, Colorado and lived there until her death in March 2016. In October of 2016, he relocated to Garretson, SD to be close to his son, Steven and his family.
Robert was preceded in death by his grandparents, Lawrence and Nettie Reed, parents Charles and Eloise Reed, his son Joshua Aaron Reed, and wife Gretchen Ann Sturgis Reed. The loss of his wife and son within four months’ time was especially devastating for him.
Robert is survived by his son, Steven (Stacie) Reed, and their family of Garretson, SD; daughter, Anne (Dan) Wagner and their family of Losantville, Indiana; son Scott (Evi) Reed and their family of Moses Lake, Washington; daughter, Carly Reed and son, Matthew Reed of Rapid City, SD; 17 grandchildren; and five great grandchildren. He highly valued his friends made in Garretson.
Robert enjoyed hunting and fishing. He was especially proud of his military service and his time helping surgical patients. He hopes to be with his parents, his son, and wife for the future.
Update 10/28/21: On Wednesday, October 27, Garretson School District announced a date change for the first play-off game to Nov 1 at 7:00 p.m. The article has been changed to reflect this.
Last Tuesday, October 19, it was blue vs blue as the Garretson Blue Dragons volleyball team faced off against West Central.
Anna Jones
The Lady Dragons came out of the gate screaming. As their final home game of the season, it was also Senior Night, and Coach Dennis Northrup started his six seniors. They took the opportunity to show the rapport and experience built over the past several years. Their blue-suited opponents cowered, allowing the powerhouse team to take the first set 25-9.
During the second set, West Central made an effort to rally, but the Dragons shut them down and again took the set 25-15.
During the third set, an inability to return the attacks set by Garretson made it difficult for the Trojans to gather points, but they were still able to take the Dragons by surprise and show that slow and steady could win the race. They pulled out 19 points before Garretson took the game-winning point.
Aliyah Leedy had 3 aces, Jaelyn Benson and Alli Gawarecki had 2, and Sam Shellum had one. Logan Bly led with kills, tacking 11 more onto her scoreboard, while Lily Ranschau had 8, A. Gawarecki had 6, and Kaylin Koch had 5. Anna Jones, Ranschau, and Bly had 3 block assists each, and Benson accumulated 27 assists. Benson also had 8 digs, Lexi Gawarecki had 7, and Leedy and Ranschau each tabulated 6.
The team then traveled to Colman-Egan (21-7), where they again took down the opposing team in three sets, 25-15, 25-8, and 25-17.
The Lady Dragons nabbed 65 digs, with Benson leading the pack with 17. Ranschau and L. Gawarecki had 11 digs each. Jones, Ranschau, and Bly each had solo blocks, and the team tallied 37 kills. Ranschau led on those with 10, Koch had 9, and Jones and Bly gathered 6 each.
They then headed to Volga to take on the Sioux Valley Cossacks (14-16) for their final regular game of the season, where the three sets were each identical score-wise: 25-14, in favor of Garretson.
L. Gawarecki led the way with 13 digs, while Benson had 9 and Ranschau, 8. Benson added another 28 assists to her tally, and Bly added 9 more kills and 4 block assists to her score. Koch had 8 kills, Ranschau 7, and Benson 5. Ranschau gathered 3 aces while Leedy and L. Gawarecki sunk 2 and Koch landed 1 in the other court. A. Gawarecki had 3 block assists and Jones had 2.
On Monday, November 1, the Lady Blue Dragons will be hosting the first bracket of the Region 3A tourney against the seventh seeded conference player, currently West Central. The winner of that game will head to Harrisburg on Thursday, November 4.
"Our focus is one game at a time," said assistant coach Kelsey Buchholz. "We are confident in our skills, talent, and teamwork but at this point in the season, everyone is 0-0 and anything can happen. We need to take care of business one game, one set, and one point at a time."
In related news, Head Coach Dennis Northrup was named one of the coach finalists of the year by Adrenaline Volleyball, an honor that is well-deserved. The volleyball program at Garretson has come a long way in the past several years since he took the reins.
GHS won their first post-season game handily against Hamlin on Thursday, Oct 21., with a final score of 28-7.
Photo by Peyton Abraham
"It was a good effort for us,” said head coach Chris Long. “We executed our game plan well, played with good effort and enthusiasm and didn't let negative things spiral into more negative things. Our guys are prepared for the postseason because we played one of the more difficult regular season schedules in 9-man football. We just have to keep working hard and being ready for the next play."
The Blue Dragons had an excellent first quarter. Dylan Kindt made a successful pass to to Cooper Long for 8 yards. Jenna VanHolland had a successful extra point kick as well. At the tail end of the first quarter Kindt ran the football in for another touchdown. And VanHolland made another successful point kick.
Hamlin got some of their own back in with 3:29 seconds on the clock in the second quarter, with a 66-yard run by Luke Fraser and a successful point kick from Troy Randall Jr.
With 46 seconds left on the clock before the end of the half Xander Sheehan made a punt attempt that was blocked by the Blue Dragons. Long recovered the ball and made a touchdown. VanHolland kicked in another successful extra point goal.
Only one more touchdown was scored this game and it was by the Blue Dragons! Again, Kindt ran the ball in and VanHolland kicked in that pig one more time, burying Hamlin 28-7.
"We ran the ball very effectively this week and we had worked on that prior to in practice,” said Long. “We did a nice job of getting on blocks and getting hats on hats. That's all on our offensive line and wingbacks and fullback. We had great support on Thursday, our crowd was loud and excited. We really hope we can get that support plus some to head to Parkston.”
More business changes are coming to town as a popular salon rebrands and opens in a new location, several Halloween activities are on the docket this week, and we go into depth explaining what natural gas prices are going to do in the area this winter (spoiler: much better than in many areas), and football and volleyball are entering their postseason play.
There's a lot going on in our community. Keep up with all of it with the Community Events Calendar on page 4 in the on-line or paper version. With your on-line subscription, you can download it here and have it easy to hand!
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More business changes are coming to town as a popular salon rebrands and opens in a new location, several Halloween activities are on the docket this week, and we go into depth explaining what natural gas prices are going to do in the area this winter (spoiler: much better than in many areas), and football and volleyball are entering their postseason play.
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Garretson faced Chester on Friday, Oct. 15. This was a crushing game for the Blue Dragons as Chester outplayed GHS, leaving the score 14 -63! It was a defeat that was hard to take.
"We have to learn from Friday and move on,” said Head Coach Chris Long. “Chester made plays and we didn't respond very well. We have to forget about what happened the last play and focus on the next play. I'm confident we will respond with a great effort against Hamlin this week."
It was a brutal way to finish the regular season and our last home game. Now, Garretson (4- 4) will travel to Hayti to play Hamlin County today (Thursday, Oct. 21). GHS is currently 11th in the rankings.
"Hamlin has a good quarterback and they like to throw the football,” said Long. “We have to find a way to pressure him into getting rid of the ball ear- lier than he wants to and defensively we are going to try and get people moving at the snap. We feel that's our best opportunity to help our defense come up with some stops and force turnovers."
On Tuesday, October 12, the Garretson Blue Dragon volleyball team took on the McCook County/Montrose Fighting Cougars in the Dragon's Lair.
Garretson got the first point out of the gate, but didn't seem to recognize right away that MCM was going to be threat. The opposition team made that very clear as they pulled out the next three points, and then held onto the lead.
The Lady Dragons put their game face on and worked to keep up, closing the gap each time the Cougars pulled ahead. The set nearly looked lost as the Cougars approached the 20th point while holding Garretson to 15, but the team rallied and pulled back to a tie. The Cougars refused to let go, and pulled back ahead 23-20. Looking at the set point, a time out was called and Coach Northrup let the team know it wasn't their game so far. The Dragons acknowledged the coaching, and held the Cougars to 24 points while they gathered four more, tying again 24-24. However, they couldn't seem to surpass the lead, and the Cougars took the set 26-24.
The second set was in the Dragons' favor as they roared into action and won 25-13. They again took the first point of the set, but this time they didn't let go of the lead. MCM continually found themselves hitting the ball out of bounds, or their toss backs solidly blocked by Logan Bly, Lily Ranschau, Jaelyn Benson, Kaylin Koch, and Anna Jones.
Garretson also took the third (25-15) and fourth (25-18) sets, showing the Cougars why they've been the team to beat this season.
The Dragons then hit the road on Thursday, heading to Tea to take on the Titans. The team showed the Titans their teeth and came away with a 3-set win, 25-18, 25-12, and 26-24.
As the team neared the end of their regular season, they faced off with West Central at their final home game on Tuesday (results not available at press time). On the road, they'll finish the regular season by taking on Colman-Egan tomorrow (Friday) and Sioux Valley on Monday. The region 3A tournament will be held on Tuesday, November 2.
The American Legion Auxiliary met on October 7. Chairperson, Cheryl, opened our meeting and Chaplain, Sue, led us in prayer.
Roll call of officers indicated one absent.
The secretary’s minutes were read, approved and placed on file.
The treasurer’s report was given by Cheryl and placed on file for audit.
The membership report showed 125 at the present time.
It was indicated that Diane had sent several cards this month.
Bingo at Palisade Health Care will now resume and Cheryl will be the chairperson.
Communications, including our monthly newsletter from Noelle Bonjour were read. It was reported that 35 attended our district meeting here including nine from our unit.
The Honor Flight fundraiser on October 3 was very successful.
Rhonda reported that she gave dictionaries to 34 3rd graders at the Garretson Elementary School with Ethel assisting. Motion to pay the bills relating to the dictionaries was approved by Esther and seconded by Denise.
For our membership goal we would like to be 100% by November 10.
Our next meeting is on November 4 at 8:00 with a meal before at 7:00. Veterans Day is November 11.
Sue closed with a prayer and My Country Tis of Thee was sung by members.
Last week Thursday, Garretson Cross Country sprinted across the finish line in Parker for their Big East Conference meet, ending the regular season. The Blue Dragons ended their season with regions in Madison on October 14.
The only varsity runner at the Big East Conference was Sam Schleuter at 21:33 in 24th place.
Next was junior varsity with Erin Steen at 21:57 in 10th, Claire Crepelle at 23:02 in 18th, Eliza Potter at 22:21 in 13th, Serie Risty at 22:49 in 17th, and Lucie Frewaldt at 22:45 in 16th. Also Chris Wynia at 18:55 in 16th, Noah Schotzko at 18:25 in 11th, and Nick Wynia at 22:34 in 43rd.
Since Preston Bohl is out due to injuries, Schleuter was the only boys varsity runner to go to regions in Madison.
Schleuter said, “It’s definitely tough because I have no one out there to really push me.”
Coach Jason Bohl had a follow up discussion with The Blue Ink. “We’re going to put only one kid in a varsity race and you know what, Sam is going to be the only kid that will have the opportunity to go to the state meet and hopefully he can sneak away with it.”
The Madison Country Club proved to be a tough course for the Blue Dragon runners, with no Dragons qualifying for State.
Schleuter ended his junior campaign with a time of 21:23, finishing in the middle of the pack. Chris Wynia and Noah Schotzko both improved on their JV times from last year, coming in at 17:23 and 17:25 respectively.
On the girls’ side, Sarah Welch stepped up to represent Garretson on varsity. She has been in cross country since eighth grade and while she admits that practices are sometimes hard, the meets are enjoyable. Welch finished the 5K with a time of 29:06.
Five different girls ran in the JV meet during Regions. Leading the way for the Blue Dragons was senior Erin Steen with a time of 20:01, Lucie Frewaldt (20:32), Claire Crepelle (20:34), Serie Risty (20:37), and Eliza Potter (20:42) were behind her within a minute.
Regions was the last meet of the season for the Garretson Cross Country team, and, sadly, the last meet for seniors Sarah Welch and Erin Steen.
BROOKINGS, S.D. -Sept. 28, 2021 -Scientists working with Landsat satellites used an area east of 22nd Avenue in the Research Park at South Dakota State University to measure the light reflected and heat emitted from the Earth’s surface. Their research will help ensure the accuracy of a new line of U.S. Geological Survey Landsat science products.
South Dakota State University Image Processing Laboratory Director Larry Leigh, left, and graduate research assistants Dinithi Siriwardana Pathiranage and Pedro Oliveira take readings using an ASD Field Spec, which the team has proven is the gold standard for measuring surface reflectance. These will be compared to the Arable Mark 2 technology, a less expensive instrument that can be placed permanently at a location and transmit data to a central site. Photo courtesy SDSU
“What we are doing here has a global impact,” said project manager Cody Anderson of the USGS Earth Resources and Observation Sciences Center’s (EROS) Cal/Val Center of Excellence (ECCOE), which sponsored the weeklong field campaign. The USGS-EROS ECCOE team, along with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Cal/Val team in Greenbelt, Maryland, is responsible for the data quality of the Landsat mission, including Landsat 9, which was launched Sept. 27.
From 2008 to 2019, scientists worldwide downloaded more than 100 million free Landsat images through the USGS user interface. This data provided an estimated $3.45 billion economic benefit to the scientific community in 2017 alone, according to a USGS report.
For the field campaign, USGS EROS had researchers from South Dakota State University’s Image Processing Laboratory, Rochester Institute of Technology’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science and USGS service contractor KBR-Wyle compare new technologies with traditional methods of measuring surface reflectance and surface temperature.
Chris Durell, director of business development for Labsphere, came to Brookings through company funding “to be here with world-class calibration teams” and to demonstrate its mirror-based reflectance measurement technology.
In December, USGS rolled out its Level 2 products. “In the past, everything was Level 1, above the atmosphere and scientists had to do their own atmospheric corrections. The Level 2 Landsat products already have the correction component,” Anderson said. This not only saves researchers time and money, but also means the scientists are working with “data processed in the same way—everyone starts from the same point.
“In the past, we focused on finding the best possible site, the clearest atmosphere, to clear out the unknowns,” Anderson continued. “We wanted to remove everything from here to the satellite. Now, we want to get a broader area, different land surface types and atmospheric conditions in different regions throughout the United States. We’re reintroducing those unknowns and using multiple sites to test the algorithms (used for the Level 2 products) and how they work globally.”
Measuring surface reflectance
Rochester Institute of Technology research scientist Nina Gibson Raqueňo, far right kneeling, describes the sensors aboard the drone to Cody Anderson, project manager of the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources and Observation Sciences Center’s Cal/Val Center of Excellence, kneeling, and (standing from left) KBR-Wyle engineer TJ Robbins, USGS field manager Jeff Irwin and KBR-Wyle team lead Josh Mann. KBR-Wyle is a contractor to USGS-EROS. Photo courtesy SDSU
SDSU Image Processing Lab Director Larry Leigh said, “With Level 1, we were calibrating the sensors (on the satellites). With Level 2 surface products, the emphasis has shifted to coming up with technology to validate this higher-order product.”
During the field campaign, the SDSU researchers used an ASD Field Spec, which they have proven is the gold standard for measuring surface reflectance, and tested the Arable Mark 2 technology, which can be placed permanently at a location and transmit data to a central site.
“It’s not a high-quality instrument, like the ASD which requires a team to take readings at the site, but it’s inexpensive and we can stick out in a field and walk away. It has good potential, but we have to determine is whether it’s good enough,” Leigh said.
As another partner working on surface product validation, the RIT team deployed Headwall instrumentation on a pair of drones to do hyperspectral imaging, which, like the ASD, covers the visible and near infrared bands, and multispectral imaging, as does the Arable technology. Hyperspectral imaging divides the wavelengths into fine segments, while multispectral takes a broader approach with fewer bands.
Rochester Institute of Technology research scientist Tim Bauch controls one of two drones which fly in tandem to take measurements during the Landsat field campaign. Photo courtesy SDSU
“A lot of time has been spent putting the sensors together, buying the instruments and integrating the sensors so they talk to the drones,” said senior scientist Aaron Gerace, who leads the RIT team. The drone program, which began through more than $1 million in internal RIT funding, is in its second year.
SDSU Distinguished Professor Emeritus Dennis Helder, who worked on the field campaign through USGS contractor KBR-Wyle, said, “These are expensive technologies, but they have the potential to cover more territory and thereby produce a larger aerial image.”
In addition, Durell and RIT doctoral student David Coran worked with Planet, a commercial satellite company, to demonstrate the capabilities of Labsphere’s FLARE, which stands for Field Line-of-Sight Automated Radiance Exposure. The technology uses convex mirrors to redirect the sun’s rays toward the satellite and take radiometric (reflectance) and geometric measurements.
“We are showing the USGS, NASA and RIT teams that this is a really quick, inexpensive way to do the same things they’re doing,” he said, noting that in one day as many as 10 satellites passed over the field campaign site.
Helder said, “If they can show the mirrors work, this technology would make it possible to validate a 10-by-10-mile (or larger) area as long as the atmosphere is the same over that area. The potential is significant.”
Addressing thermal side
The RIT team works on the thermal side of the Landsat mission. “We’ve used an existing algorithm tailored for the Landsat thermal infrared sensor to measure surface temperature in two thermal bands,” Gerace said.
On the ground, the RIT researchers deployed a D&P FTIR spectral radiometer—the gold standard for measuring surface temperature—and a broadband radiometer called the Apogee, which is a commonly used instrument for measuring surface temperature. Furthermore, this is the first time RIT has tested a longwave infrared thermal camera, known as the FLIR, aboard drones.
Rochester Institute of Technology doctoral student Dave Conran, left, and Labsphere’s director of business development Chris Durell check the positioning of an array of convex mirrors that redirect the sun’s rays toward satellites passing overhead to take radiometric (reflectance) and geometric measurements. During the Landsat field campaign, as many as 10 satellites passed over the site in a single day. Photo courtesy SDSU
“We are using this sensor data along with some image processing techniques to measure the surface temperature of water, vegetation, sand and asphalt,” Gerace said. “Our hope is this can be used to support Landsat calibration and characterization of our experimental sensors to validate Landsat’s surface temperature products.”
Another ground-based RIT technology based on thermopile detectors holds promise for improving surface temperature accuracy over land. Gerace and doctoral student Lucy Falcon developed the devices, which are the size of a nickel and have eight spectral channels optimized for Landsat.
“Ultimately, we can place them permanently in a field and take temperature measurements along with other data, such as wind speed, direction and rainfall, which can be transmitted to a website through which the free data can be downloaded,” Gerace said. By changing the filter configuration, the RIT researchers can also adapt the instrument for other companies’ satellites.
USGS’s Anderson concluded, “Everyone is going after automation, but before we can trust the automation we need to go out and do the legwork.”
