

image by: Contributed

From remaining, Jeremy Alkire, Grant Lysell-Alkire, Sawyer Lysell-Alkire, and Ericka Lysell are pictured for the duration of a new loved ones journey.

A KU aerospace engineering university student who died in a automobile accident in central Kansas just times in advance of Christmas was passionate about lab function and weightlifting and known for his uplifting character, his mom instructed the Journal-Entire world on Friday.
“He was the hoopla person,” Ericka Lysell claimed of her son Grant Logan Lysell-Alkire. “I usually teased him that he experienced an engineering brain but a social worker heart.”
On Dec. 21, Grant, 21, and his brother Sawyer, 16, have been coming again from a journey to Salina, which is about 15 miles north of their hometown of Lindsborg. Ericka stated the weather had began to change undesirable at all around 9:15 p.m., and her spouse, Jeremy Alkire, known as Grant and Sawyer to warn them about the temperature, but got no solution.
At about the very same time as he called, the brothers’ 2003 Mazda Tribute SUV overturned into the ditch on Interstate 135, just brief of the exit to Lindsborg, in accordance to the Kansas Highway Patrol’s crash logs.
Ericka explained that Sawyer, who was driving, suffered some broken bones in his hand and that Grant, in the passenger seat, died on effect.
“They ended up pretty much property,” she explained.
The auto arrived to a cease 100 ft off the street, according to the crash logs. Ericka explained Sawyer, who was barefoot, managed to crawl via the window and around a barbed wire fence and flag down a passing motorist from Lindsborg, who identified as 911.
“We really do not know how he did it,” Ericka mentioned. “He was running barefoot down the interstate in an ice storm.”
She said that ahead of the brothers remaining Lindsborg that working day, Grant had insisted that Sawyer drive, declaring that he needed much more follow driving on the interstate. Right after the accident, Sawyer told Ericka that they were going about 75 mph and undertaking wonderful, but then they slid off the slick highway.
“He (Sawyer) is superior, physically, but it is just a full other process that he is likely to have to go as a result of now,” Ericka reported.
Grant Logan Lysell-Alkire
Ericka mentioned Grant was an eager pupil in the aerospace engineering program at KU and aspired to finally perform at the rocket and spacecraft business SpaceX. He was in the center of his junior yr at KU, and his preferred place to be was in the lab in the engineering creating, she stated.
“He was generally just wicked wise,” Ericka said. “We do not know where his brains came from. My partner is a very little additional like that, but I’m a social worker I do not get the math and science things.”
When Shawn Keshmiri, an aerospace engineering professor at KU and 1 of Grant’s mentors, listened to of Grant’s death, he despatched a information to Grant’s roommate that claimed: “I am so devastated and heartbroken and can’t feel we misplaced this kind of a sort soul.”
“I had recognized Grant due to the fact his freshman calendar year when he was my advisee,” Keshmiri wrote, including that “seeing his form and curious confront was one particular of the greatest items about our AE-550 courses.”
Kashmiri told the Journal-Planet Friday that Grant was “loved by all of his peers and professors” and he “can’t think they will have to get started the spring semester without having him.”
In addition to science, Grant cherished weightlifting and would often perform out at the KU Rec Heart, Ericka said.
“In superior faculty, football was his existence, but his massive point was weightlifting. He beloved to raise. That was his enthusiasm,” she explained.
Grant’s father, Jeremy, claimed that Grant normally was striving to recruit his buddies to be part of him at the health and fitness center and would do his ideal to assistance them and really encourage their successes. Ericka mentioned Grant’s roommate told her that Grant designed him feel at home following he moved from out of point out to attend KU.
Grant was also a KU sports activities fan and attended each individual KU soccer residence video game this time, and Ericka mentioned she could envision him cheering the group on in the course of its bowl game against Arkansas on Thursday evening.
Again in Lindsborg, Grant was recognised as a function model and mentor to some community little ones, Ericka explained.
“He had the most caring coronary heart,” she reported. “He had taken on these community young children when he was a lifeguard at the pool. They were being usually acquiring kicked out of the pool, but he would tell them to come again tomorrow and consider again. The previous four many years we experienced Xmas with all those young children. It broke their hearts when he went off to college or university,” she explained.
Now, Grant’s relatives hopes to honor his caring spirit by establishing a fund to assistance children in the Lindsborg space. In lieu of bouquets, the family members is asking for donations to assist set up the fund.
“He just loved tough,” Ericka mentioned. “He liked his buddies and loved ones so a lot.”
A visitation for Grant will be held at 5 p.m. Jan. 6 at the American Legion in Lindsborg, adopted by a memorial support at 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 7.





