SCA7 Through My Eyes

Lance had an exceptional high school experience due in large part to many wonderful people around him that greatly enriched his life.  This disease progressed quickly for him, since he got it at a young age.  He lost his eyesight and grew weaker a lot faster than his mom did for example.  As a result he only lived one year beyond his high school graduation.  Through it all though Lance remained happy and loved his life, and he continued to make those around him smile and laugh.

Lance not only loved to tell jokes, but he also loved to tell a good story or pull a prank to make people laugh.  His dad, Scott, had many, many pranks that he had done throughout his life that Lance loved to tell.  But like his dad, he also enjoyed thinking up a good prank.  In my opinion, the pranks he pulled were hilarious.  Here are a couple of classics.

Lance enjoyed pulling one particular prank that he called “wheelchair tipping.”  With the help of his friends, he would have his wheelchair tipped over next to a main street or in highly public areas.  Then he and his gang would hide nearby to watch people’s reactions. One time Lance went with his cousin’s family to visit the Rim Trail between Pinetop and Wagon Wheel where you can take a paved trail to look off the edge of the rim.  His cousin Max put Lance in his wheelchair and the two ran ahead; they saw a perfect place to pull a prank.  Max helped Lance sit behind some bushes nearby and then took his wheelchair next to the cliff edge and tipped it onto its side.  They both watched and laughed from behind the bushes as they watched people walk up to the scene.  Hikers would see the empty wheelchair then peer over the edge.  They caused a lot of anxiety.  When Lance’s Aunt Loraine came, she immediately said, “Boys, come out from under those bushes.”

On another occasion the large Flake family was all together for the Thanksgiving holiday.  That evening, many of them were up in the cedar hills roasting hotdogs and marshmallows.  Someone had the idea to go a little further up to a big culvert that was full of 20 years or so worth of tumble weeds and light it on fire.  They knew it was going to be big but safe.  It was about 10pm when they lit it, and it turned out to be much bigger than expected.  If you were in town, it  might have looked like a volcano erupted.  The whole mountain was aglow.  The weeds burned quickly, and it was over in 5 min.  From their view on the mountain, the family could see that fire trucks were coming in response to the blaze.  Fortunately in this case, it took the fire fighters a bit to get there, and when they did, everyone had dispersed and was gone…except for Lance, who deliberately stayed behind.  He was siting there in his wheelchair by himself, roasting a hotdog.  The firecheif questioned Lance who wore his classic mischievous grin on his face.  They knew they were getting nowhere with him so they turned around and left.

Another funny thing that Lance liked to do was to wear t-shirts that said funny things. He had one that said “Babe Magnet.”  He was quite the charmer with the ladies; he had a way with the girls.  At school he would whistle at them from his wheelchair and say something like, “You have nice ankles.”  They would laugh and respond with, “Lance, you can’t even see my ankles.”  All the time with Lance and that classic grin on his face.  He was always respectful yet funny and kind with the attention he gave them.  The girls in return were very good to him.  They made sure he had a date to all the school dances

The high school sporting coaches and teams were really good to Lance too.  They tried to help him participate in whatever way he could.  For football he got to sit on the sideline with the team for the games.  He also got to participate in the halftime pep talk in the locker room.  He even got a jersey and was part of the team picture.  The boys on the team were all really good to him and tried to share the limelight with him.

The basketball team was also good to Lance.  He loved cheering at their games and most especially enjoyed bad-mouthing the refs.  He would often yell at them.  In fact, it was Lance’s dream to get kicked out of a game for bad-mouthing the refs.  Scott was friends with one of the referees, and they set it up for Lance to get kicked out of a game.  Even the team was in on it.  During the game, Scott helped to encourage Lance in his bad-mouthing the refs for all their bad calls.  The ref played along by being upset with Lance and giving him warnings.  This encouraged him all the more.  Eventually Lance was given all his warnings, and he was kicked out.  The ref pushed him off the court with Lance wearing a great big smile on his face.  The entire audience saw what happened, and not knowing about the plan, began to boo loudly as he was being pushed out.  Lance was a most beloved fan.  Shortly thereafter they brought Lance back in, and he was received with a standing ovation.  He was then presented with a “number 1 fan” shirt by the team.  This was a title that he more than deserved.

Lance throughly enjoyed being a part of the Snowflake high school teams, but his involvement in sports did not stop there.  He watched sports on TV whenever he had the chance.  With his great memory, he was able to remember all he watched and heard.  He was a sports expert.  He could speak intelligently about college and pro sports, even less popular sports like hockey.  Once his uncle had some friends at work who were really into Fantasy Football.  They asked his uncle to be apart of their league.  He went to Lance, and got all his picks and trades from him.  He was so successful that his friends kept saying, “You are so lucky!”

Lance loved March Madness.  He couldn’t wait to hear the announcement of the 64 teams.  He would have a giant blank poster put up on the wall, and with the help of others he would then have them written on the poster in their coordinated brackets.  He would then have contests with his family and friends on who could most accurately predict the winning teams.  With his vast knowledge of the various teams, he usually did pretty well.

Lance’s love of sports ran deep.  Just a couple of weeks before he passed away, he couldn’t sleep all night one night because he couldn’t wait to hear about the NFL draft.  And then once he did hear, he spent the next two days cussing the Houston Texans for their stupid draft pick.

Lance was a popular kid that so many people liked to be around.  He also liked being around them.  His dad built a barn on their property, and Lance enjoyed inviting everyone over to it for parties.  When he wanted to have a barn party, he only had to make one phone call to his cousin Kate Denhalter.  She would get the word out, and a huge group of people would show up.  There would be a big range of ages, but Lance throughly enjoyed it.  They would talk, eat ice cream, play games, and, Lance’s favorite, light fireworks.  He LOVED fireworks!  They always did fireworks…a whole bunch of them.  He really knew how to throw a super-fun party.

Lance loved his friends and most especially, their visits.  As the disease progressed, it became harder for him to get out, so his visitors became very meaningful to him.  There always seemed to be a car parked at their house.  Many kids in Snowflake helped Lance to have a wonderful and fulfilling life.

Lance lived his life to the fullest despite all his physical aliments, and here is a list of things he loved to do:

• Houseboat vacations on Lake Powell
• Fishing…caught a lot of fish with Elden Blair
• Video games
• Camping in the cedars
• Fireworks
• Spotlighting rabbits with the four-wheeler light
• Riding four-wheelers, go-cars
• Bugling elk
• Skydiving…he went twice
• Swimming in the ocean
• Parties in the barn
• March Madness
• Sporting events of any kind
• Sports stats keeping
• Wearing funny shirts
• Telling jokes
• Pulling pranks…pulled a lot of pranks
• Dancing
• Smile…seemed to always have one on his face
• Seminary and bantering with the teachers by bashing BYU, not because he didn’t like BYU but because it raised so much emotion within loyal BYU fans
• Memorizing scripture…his seminary teacher said he was a scriptorian and master at the scriptures

Lance had an inspiring spiritual side.  Since he was blind and wheelchair bound, he couldn’t always say his prayers in secret.  Scott often heard him saying them.  Lance would always thank Heavenly Father for all his blessings.  That was a humbling thing to hear coming from someone who struggled so very much.

One time his dad caught him saying a prayer while he was in the bathtub.  His right arm didn’t work too well, so he reached over with his left arm and picked it up, folded it across his chest, then bowed his head.  Scott waited on the bathroom counter and when Lance’s lips stopped moving he asked, “Lance, were you praying?”  He didn’t realize his dad saw him, so with a sheepish grin he replied, “Yeah.”  “What were you praying for?” his dad asked.  “That your knees would get better,” he responded.  Wow!  He was praying for his dad’s knees while he himself was so crippled that he needed help to take a bath and had one arm that didn’t even work well enough to lift across his chest.  I think this is a great example of being selfless.  Scott said that Lance mostly prayed for others.

Lance was able to bless the sacrament at church one month before his mother passed away.  It was a moving experience for all who were there to witness it.  The other priests had to help Lance from his wheelchair to the sacrament table bench.  They then helped him onto his knees, so he could kneel to say the prayer.  He had memorized it, since he could not see the words to read them.  He recited it perfectly.  Everyone was so moved that it was silent as the sacrament was passed.  The spirit was so strong.  The speaker who was assigned to give a talk could hardly speak.  He said that he had never felt a feeling like that in a sacrament meeting, ever.

About a couple of years after Carolyn passed away, Scott met and married a most wonderful woman, Sarah.  She helped to care for Lance the last year of his life.  She was very good to him, and they formed a sweet bond.  She was so good at helping him that he often called out for her to come help him with his needs instead of Scott.  Scott was and is really grateful for Sarah and for all she did.  It was very hard for her to watch Lance struggle so much with this disease.

After Lance graduated high school, he began to become very weak.  Eating became more difficult.  He became very thin.  He didn’t have the strength or desire to eat, but he knew he should.  At times he would call out, “I need to eat something.  I need to eat something.”  They would give him something to nibble on like a piece of licorice.

He spent most of his last days in the living room on the La-Z-boy, so he could be around when anyone came to visit.  At one point the family thought he was close to passing away, and then out of nowhere he came back around.  One of his friends came to the door, and Lance called out to him.  He was not very responsive, but he surprised everyone once in a while.

Eventually, hospice came to help.  When the nurse first got there, she could tell he was in pain and put a catheter into him.  His bladder was full, and she said out loud, “My goodness, he has peed a whole liter.”  He had not been responsive the whole day until later that night a couple of Lance’s friends came to the front door, and Lance called out, “James, Mitch, guess what?  I peed a whole liter!” and then laughed about it.  He then gave them some relationship advice about their girlfriends.  This was only a couple of days before he passed away.  He just kept living until the very end.

The night before Lance passed away, he had a period where he would breathe and stop, then start breathing, and on and on.  Scott was alone with him on this night.  As a loving father he could see Lance’s struggle, and he had come to the point where he was ready to let him go and be released from his suffering.  Still he could see that Lance was fighting to stay alive; he was holding onto life.  Lance could not be hurried along, but he would go on his own terms.  The next morning they brought him into Scott and Sara’s room along with Callie.  At 10am he died, and his family was around him when he passed away.

After Lance had graduated high school, all of his cousins and friends left on missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he very much wanted to go himself.  It was hard for him to have to stay behind.  Now Lance left everyone else behind as he left to serve a mission for his Savior Jesus Christ.

Scott spoke at Lance’s funeral and shared a beautiful poem in part of his talk.  I have also included his closing remarks below it.

Poem by his father:

A Turn With Lance

• To those who grabbed his shoulder and saved him from a fall
• To those who stopped and opened doors or pushed him down the hall
• To childhood friends who let him play the game and didn’t really care
• That he had to be the quarterback and throw from his wheelchair
• To those who called him on the phone and listened patiently
• As he told in perfect detail of a game he could not see
• For those of you who ran into Lance, or perhaps he ran into you
• For those who grabbed his knee and said, “It’s me Lance. How are you?”
• For those who sat by Lance at games and helped him see it all
• And helped him yell in the right direction when a ref made a bad call
• For those who showed up at the house to take Lance for a ride,
• or chase the bunnies on the quad and had the guts to let him drive
• For those who found him jerseys for every game day
• and helped him be a Lobo, even though he couldn’t play
• To pretty girls with tender hearts  watching out for Lance
• and made sure he went to formals and the homecoming dance
• To his sister, who with perfect love would finish everyday
• by telling Lance she loved him in a funny Spanglish way
• He didn’t know your body type or the color of your skin
• He only knew you for your kindness that you showed so freely to him
• So many loved him and served him. And if life is indeed a dance
• Aren’t we all a little better because we had a turn with Lance

“I am so grateful I had a turn with Lance! I use to tell him that we were friends in the pre-existence and somebody flipped a coin and I got to be the dad and he got to be the son.  And that when we got together in the next life it would be just the same.  I don’t know whether that is true, but I connected with Lance and he was so easy to love.  I was elevated, being his father and I am so grateful for every minute, every opportunity and consider it a privilege.  I will miss him in this life.  I will miss his sense of humor and everything about him.”

“I express my love to all of you for helping us get Lance through 20 years of what I consider to be [in] fine fashion.  Lance was suffering at the end, but he wasn’t ready to go yet.  I didn’t know how he could keep living.  He loved life.  It is a tribute to this little community and all the good people and teachers.  I can’t name all the people who made it all work for Lance.  I express my love to you and my testimony of the gospel that promotes these kind of feelings and behaviors in all of us.”

Lance’s Cousin, Max Eddington, wrote a song about Lance.  It is beautiful.  It always touches my heart when I listen to it.