Gaining traction

LINCOLN — One of the biggest donations to the startup of the Lincoln football program was born 81 years ago and could barely hold an offensive lineman.

The Cardinals are earning money for their football team by selling raffle tickets for a 1927 Model T Ford, a donation from Mike and Karen Gruhn.

The slick-looking restored Model T will go to the winning $100 ticket. No more than 300 will be sold.

“Anytime you can get any kind of donation like that, it’s great,” Lincoln Superintendent Kevin Smith said. “Our community is very supportive of the school district. I think it just shows how valued the school is in the area. … I’m hoping what (the Gruhns) did will go on to inspire others to help out as well.”

The car — which was donated in honor of Mike’s brother, Richard — is worth at least $15,000, according to a recent appraisal. Smith said more than 100 tickets have already been sold.
“We felt (football) was almost necessary to maintain our viability as a town, as a school,” Mike Gruhn said. “Because everybody else around us is already either in the process or already has football.”

Smith said no date has been set for when the drawing will take place, but he plans to announce a date for sometime in the fall once at least 200 tickets have been sold.

“We’re going to get to the point where we feel like we’ve (exhausted) all avenues,” Smith said.

The Gruhns said they donated the car because they wanted to support the football program and thought this was something they could do without having to give money.

“Karen and I thought, when we did this, it might give other people some other ideas that you don’t necessarily have to dig into your bank account and give money,” Mike Gruhn said. “People can give things that are worth money and it can work just as well. … We were hoping that something would evolve like that.”

The quarterback club came up with the idea for the raffle to raise money. A raffle gives ticket holders at worst a 1-in-300 chance of winning the Model T for just $100.

“My dad made this his retirement project,” Mike Gruhn said of the Model T. “He spent several years rebuilding it and really did an excellent job.”

Mike said he learned his father was planning to sell the car and decided to buy it himself so the vehicle would stay in the family.

The Model T appears to be in pristine condition. Its green and black paint job shows off the old-fashioned flair of one of America’s early automobiles. The vehicle is tough to drive, the Gruhns say, but it does run.

The car has three speeds — reverse, fast and slow — and Mike Gruhn said you need to have your hands doing about four things at once to start it, but that’s typical of cars of that era.

“It’s just that you have to know how to start it,” Karen Gruhn said.

The donation is one of the two biggest gifts the school has received in support of the football program. The other is the 10 acres Leroy and Mary Donley donated for the field — located on the north side of the high school.

The school plans to launch its football program with a junior varsity season in 2009, and its first year of varsity football will be in the fall of 2010.