Larry Lane with Jerry Reese, General Manager of the NY Giants

During church today, I was fortunate to meet Mr. Jerry Reese, the general manager of the NY Giants professional football team.

He was a gueat speaker during the Sunday service. During his talk, he shared how he was raised in a small town in TN (population 2400), lived in a home with indoor plumbing until he was 12, learned his leadership skills as the quarterback in his small town foot team, worked quietly/humbly/hard up through the ranks as an asst. coach of his college team, and then helped the Giants win the Superbowl during his first year as GM with them.

You would never know that he was in deep mourning due to the loss of a close relative while in the throws of the NFL draft this year. The death was sudden and unexpected. He had to put a business and sometimes happy game face on during his ESPN interviews and while focusing only on the draft that will affect the success of the team for the entire season to come.

In fact, when we visited, I asked him if he has heard any inside scoop about my favorite professional football team, the Dallas Cowboys. As you may have read on the previous blog, their indoor training facility blew apart yesterday.

Jerry had only heard about it on the news and has been a bit out of touch of any inside scoop sources since he was just returning from the funeral of his close relative.

Here is the link to the previous blog
http://lanearchitecture.blogspot.com/2009/05/dallas-cowboys-indoor-practice-field.html

Keep Jerry and his family (wife, son, and daughter) in your prayers.

(Maybe keep the Cowboys in your prayers too).

In case you haven't been able to find the secret that Jerry shared with me, here it is.....

His secret was that he could not tell about the death of his wife's brother while in the thick of the NFL draft season. He kept that as a secret to everyone even while being interviewed by the press such as ESPN.

The lesson that he taught by keeping this secret was that he was able to have peace by the grace of God.

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Dallas Cowboy's indoor practice field collapses

This can happen to your home! Here is how to avoid a catastrophe.

Today, around 3:30 pm CST, my favorite professional football team's indoor practice field came apart at the seams. Although there were several people injured, some badly, there fortunately were no casualties.

How could this structural failure have happened?

I am not a professional structural engineer. And at the present time, no one probably knows specifically what caused the collapse. But, there are some things that I know might be the cause of today's calamity. The same things could happen to your home.

Go to this web site, scroll down to the video and what it at:
http://news.aol.com/article/roof-collapses-at-cowboys-practice/459897?icid=webmail|wbml-aol|dl1|link1|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Froof-collapses-at-cowboys-practice%2F459897

Notice that there are a bunch of metal supports that look like metal match sticks that are placed into a series of rectangle frames along the outer sides of the structure. They are all leaning to one direction. This is called "racking." It can be prevented by putting more metal supports from one corner of the rectangle diagonally to the opposite corner. If your home is built with 2 x 4 studs, then there should be horizontal members between the studs to keep them from deforming.

Even though the winds were not at tornado force speed (75 to over 100 mph), there were gusts up to 60 mph around this structure today. There was nothing to block this wind from smashing up against this indoor facility. This inflatable fabric balloon building is in the middle of a flat field with no buildings or trees nearby. It was less protected from the strong winds than a whirling trailer home in a sand storm. At least plan to have planting around your home to shield it from the wind.

Perhaps the structure was structurally designed to withstand an uplifting force, but if a strong wind entered into a tear in the fabric skin or through an open access portal, it is possible that the wind pressure was much higher inside the fabric bubble than what was planned. It was probably like opening up an umbrella on a windy day and it just flops inside out. You probably already know not to open up your patio awnings on windy days though.

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http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=4128173

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