My older brother Mark, his three sons (one Marine, one Airforce, and the other in college) along with a ‘brother rat’ and some friends stopped by for some firearms practice. My youngest son Patrick was with them all day, loved it. They started around 1pm and finished around 7pm when we had to put out the beginnings of a small forest fire started by a tracer round.

They brought along a barrett 50cal, a 6.5 creedmore suppressed and a bunch of other rifles and pistols.

At sunset they got out the 50cal tracer rounds and started firing on the 500 yd target. Pretty cool to watch the tracers. Unfortunately one tracer round skipped and went up into the woods. Looked like it just stopped and was glowing, but then it started getting bigger and flickering. We all scrambled to get rakes, shovels, and a fire extinguisher and raced over to the other side of Mine Run. A mad scramble through the woods and briars and I was the first one to get over there. The leaves were burning in a circle about 8 feet wide. The fire extinguisher worked perfectly and then we dug it out and piled it up in the middle of the burned circle, making sure no embers were left. Made for an exciting end of the day. Below is a slow-mo of one of the tracer round shots.

It is their wedding anniversary and we had a small ceremony at Laurel Hill funeral home and interred their ashes. Afterwards we all gathered back at the farm for refreshments and memories. Jerry and Shirley Neal were so gracious to provide a tasty spread and setup the whole thing while we were at the ceremony. I’m am very touched by this act of kindness. Below is a slide show I put together, the song at the end was playing and finished just as he passed. While I wish I could have done a better job, there were many tears as we all remembered Bob over the years.