Blake LaForce — the 18-year-old former Vandalia High football star and state power lifting champion who rallied a town, a school and tens of thousands of other people as he fought his way through a herculean medical battle the past 19 months — has died.
Surrounded by his family, he passed away around 2 p.m. Friday afternoon, July 3, at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
“It was time,” Mark LaForce, his dad said Saturday afternoon. “I kissed him on his lips one last time, told him how much we all loved him and how proud we were of him and he went to meet his Creator.”
Initially diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblast Leukemia (ALL) in November of 2007, Blake underwent a successful born marrow/stem cell transplant in May of 2008 and seemed on the road to recovery last summer.
But in mid-August, he developed toxoplasmosis, a devastating infection in the central nervous system, that, as Mark put it, “shut down all his motor skills. All of a sudden he could no longer walk, talk, eat or drink. It’s been that way since.”
Even so, Blake had been slowly working his way back from that when, this past March 26, he had a pulmonary hemorrhage — bleeding lungs — and had been in the intensive care unit since then as he dealt with a series of medical issues. The latest was a severe problem with his ever-fragile skin.
Mark — who has written a daily journal about his son since the ordeal began (www.CaringBridge.org/visit/blakelaforce/journal) — described it in his July 2 entry:
“The skin is our largest organ and this is the major issue we have now. It happened upon him rapidly this week. Blake’s skin is almost like a burn victim’s skin now, so the risk of infection increases. It is another one of God’s miracles because Blake is actually very stable and not even on any pain medications, which is unbelievable. There are what seems an endless number of hurdles on Blake’s journey and we are in awe of his stamina, true grit and resolve….”
After Blake’s death Friday, Mark wrote: “The LaForce family is at peace and and rejoicing the fact that our strong son has a new everlasting life in a much better place.
“No more suffering, sorrow and pain.”
He then singled out TEAM BLAKE, the family members, friends Butler classmates and strangers who had taken up Blake’s’ cause over the past year and a half:
“We do not know how to thank you. Stay the course Blake started for us because he was a good servant and is (still) making a difference.”
To his son, he wrote:
“Dearest Blake, Mission Accomplished, Son. We will see you again and you are with us every minute of every day. Your smile and personality is etched in our minds forever. You are the ‘man’ in this family and have showed all of us the way. We love you so very much now and forever.”
Exact details are pending, but Mark said the visitation will be late Tuesday afternoon and early that evening July 7. On Wednesday morning there will be a celebration of life service at the Christian Life Center, 3489 Little York Road. The telephone there is: (937) 898-8811.
It was 25 years ago today that I got one of my most memorable sports souvenirs ever.
Or, maybe not.
As I used to do every year on the Fourth of July, I was covering the Firecracker 400 stock car race at Dayton International Speedway. And the 1984 race turned out to be one of NASCAR’s most celebrated moments ever.
Richard Petty won the 200th and final race of his long, legendary career that day as President Ronald Reagan watched from one of the speedway’s overhead suites.
Reagan had given the command to start the race while he was still airborne in Air Force One. And when his plane finally did touch down at the Daytona airport right next to the track, one classic photo was made of it landing in the background while Petty’s No. 43 Pontiac made its way around the track.
With three laps to go, I remember Doug Heveron lost control of his car just past the tri-oval. His Chevrolet went airborne, rolled and landed upright again. He wasn’t hurt.
Meanwhile Petty and Cale Yarborough were slamming their cars together at full throttle as they raced back to the start/finish line after the yellow flag was waved.
Petty beat him to the line by six inches and then cruised the final two caution laps on fumes. He actually ran out of gas before the checkered flag but coasted across the line.
“We all shook hands and then the President and I talked,” Petty would say later. “I think it blowed his mind that Cale and I were really running into each other at 200 m.p.h..”
I was down outside his pits as the race ended and in the jubilation that followed, my fellow sportswriter and good friend, the late Shelby Strother joined me and we edged our way in with Petty’s crew and helped push the out-of-fuel race car into Victory Lane.
When Petty headed across the speedway to meet Reagan, we followed. Another sports writer — Norm Froscher from Gainesville — was somewhere up ahead of us. As we worked our way through the phalanx of security, we eventually were able to follow Petty — and a few yards behind him, Norm — up the the long flight of outer stairs to the press box.
Petty was smoking one of his trademark thin cigars as he started up the steps. Supposedly Norm — also known for his cigars — was puffing away, too.
Petty dropped cigar on one of the top steps before going through the door to the press box and suites. Norm probably did, too.
A couple of minutes later when I got to that point on the stairs I saw the ground-out but still-smoldering stogie. I picked it up, tamped it out and carefully wrapped it in a napkin.
Today I still have that now-crumbled cigar in a sealed plastic bag.
Sportswriters aren’t supposed to get autographs and I never, ever do. Well, except for that day. Petty signed my media credential.
I have it with the cigar.
Of course the way Shelby used to delight in telling the story, I had really picked Norm Froscher’s cigar.
I’m not sure.
But even if it is Norm’s, it’s made for a good tale all these years and, after all, that’s all a storyteller is ever looking for.
It remains one of the greatest fights in boxing history. It featured two champions who brought out each other’s best for 13 punishing rounds and ended with a brutal barrage no one will forget.
It was one time I forgot I was a writer and reacted as a friend.
That’s how I remember Nov. 12, 1982, when lightweight champion Alexis Arguello met unbeaten junior welterweight champ Aaron Pryor in front of a raucous crowd of 23,800 on a warm night filled with salsa music and a big-fight edginess that swirled through the Orange Bowl.
As a Miami columnist, I had covered both fighters extensively leading up to the bout and had become especially close with Arguello, who mixed gentlemanly ways outside the ring with an executioner’s precision inside the ropes.
In his Hall of Fame career, he would win 82 of 90 fights, claim world titles at three different weights — he beat Ruben Olivares for the featherweight crown in 1974, Alfredo Escalera for the super featherweight title (also known as junior lightweight) in 1978 and Jim Watt for the lightweight championship in 1981 — and he’d get recognition as the greatest junior lightweight of the 20th century.
Over the years I covered several of his fights around the country, visited him at his Gables-by-the-Sea home — I spent Christmas Eve with him once when his wife left him — and went out fishing on his yacht, The Champ.
When he came to a function in Wilmington a dozen years ago, he told me a chilling tale, one that supposedly came to fruition two days ago in his native Nicaragua, where — at age 57 — he died of a gunshot wound to the chest. The initial report is suicide.
That night at the Orange Bowl, I was sitting ringside, right up against the canvas apron. The fight was a war and in the 13th round Arguello stunned Pryor with a withering right.
After drinking from a bottle handed to him between rounds by controversial trainer Panama Lewis, a reinvigorated Pryor landed 20 straight punches in Round 14 before the referee stopped the fight as the defenseless Arguello melted to the canvas, two feet in front of me.
People rushed to Arguello, whose eyes rolled back as he lay motionless for over four minutes. That’s when I grabbed the bottom ring rope and pulled myself closer, heartsick by what had just happened.
I remember his assistant trainer Don Kahn talking to him: “Alexis, hold on, you’ll be all right.”
The fight took a lot out of each boxer and neither was quite the same after, though Pryor would knock out Arguello again 10 months later.
After boxing, their lives sometimes paralleled each other.
They were both children of extreme poverty. Arguello’s family was so poor it made him quit school at age nine and work on a dairy farm. By 13, he’d hitchhiked to Canada and worked two jobs, which enabled him to give his parents $1.000 the following year. Within three years he was fighting as a pro.
Thanks to boxing, Arguello — like Pryor — made fortunes…and then lost them. He battled drugs and at times he struggled with family issues.
Over the years, he and Pryor became friends — at heart, Pryor is a good man, too — and whether they wanted it to be such or not, the two realized what the other had and what it meant to them.
Arguello, for all his historic accomplishment, knew that Pryor was the man who conquered him twice. Pryor knows that for all his triumph, Arguello was still the man embraced and adored by the crowds.
Each man had a piece of the other, a piece that helped them be complete.
Last year Arguello — after Pryor and his wife campaigned for him — was elected mayor of Managua.
That night in Wilmington, he quietly told me how, in 1984 — with life spiraling downward — he had snapped while out on his boat with his young son A.J. and had put a gun to his own head.
His sobbing son begged him not to kill himself and Arguello said he came to his senses: “I realized I had a lot to live for.”
If reports are true, that realization now escaped him.
And while Don Kahn’s words from that warm Orange Bowl night — “Hold on, you’ll be all right,” — have evaporated, too, one thing has not.
I’m again heartsick by what’s happened to my friend.
So did Derrick Brown cost himself millions by jumping into the NBA draft last week rather than playing his final season at Xavier and possibly upping his profile, his draft status and his bank account?
That question has been volleyed back and forth the past five days, especially down in Cincinnati — “Brown, Meeks make big mistakes by eschewing final year of eligibility” read a headline in the Cincinnati Enquirer — since the Chaminade Julienne grad was taken in the second round, the 40th pick overall, by the Charlotte Bobcats.
I can see Brown’s reasons for leaving: He’s already graduated and he sat out a red-shirt year for the Muskies; a new coach is coming in; there’s always the possibility of injury; next year’s draft will be more loaded with talent; and, of course, he had plenty of people telling him he would be a first-round pick.
That said, I still think he should have stayed. I said it before the draft.
Although Xavier’s scheme usually isn’t built to make one guy the star — at least not since David West — I think Brown could have dominated in the Atlantic 10 this coming season, especially if new coach Chris Mack could build a fire, a sense or urgency, in him for every half of every game.
And I think had Brown known last week what he knows now, he would have stayed at Xavier. In fact, his camp said so in the weeks leading up to the draft. To paraphrase: “If Derrick’s going to end up in the second round, he’ll stay in school.”
The flip side is that he’ll be playing alongside better players and be learning from Larry Brown. He certainly should make the Bobcats and that could position himself for his next contract.
As for that aforementioned Enquirer headline, it was above an item in a Sunday column by Richard Skinner, who wrote:
“They (Brown and Kentucky’s Jodie Meeks) certainly couldn’t have done much worse than being picked in the second round. Both do have great opportunities to make the teams that drafted them, but both left guaranteed millions behind by not being picked in the first round where each could have been selected next year.”
So what kind of money are we talking about here?
This isn’t the NFL — the NBA has a rookie salary scale — so the loss isn’t as drastic by not being a first-rounder. But it’s still a sizable difference of cash when you end up in the second round.
Last year, for example, Doug Lewis made $442,114 — the league minimum — from the New Jersey Nets as the 40th pick in the draft.
The 15th overall pick in 2008, Phoenix’s Robin Lopez, was slated for a three-year deal worth $5.24 million. The 25th pick, Portland’s Nicolas Batum, was set for a three-year deal worth $3.36 million.
The first pick in the draft, Derrick Rose signed a contract that gave him a contract worth a guaranteed $10,007,280 for two seasons and a team option at $5,546,160 for a third season.
(On a side note, in the NFL where there is no set scale, the top pick in the 2008 draft, Jake Long, agreed to a five-year, $57.75 million deal with the Miami Dolphins.)
In the NBA, the real money comes with the second and third contracts. Remember almost a decade ago, the second contract of Wright State’s Vitaly Potapenko — who had been a first-round pick — was worth $36 million for six years.
All this said, Brown just needs to remember guys like this: Manu Ginobli, Michael Redd, Carlos Boozer, Gilbert Arenas, Rashard Lewis, Cedric Ceballos, Dennis Rodman, Mark Price, Jerome Kersey and Jeff Hornacek.
They were all second-round picks. They all did have or are having good (some great) NBA careers and they became multi-millionaires doing so.
Eager to share the collection she had put together over the past few months, she led the way — enthusiastically telling one story after another — toward the back dining room, now The Sports Room, to show you part of what Don Donoher called “a little mini-museum.”
She never made it that far.
Just before the doorway — hanging on the wall above the corner booth in the main dining area of Hickory Bar-B-Q — her eye caught the artist’s rendering of an incredible scene at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds.
Margo Fisher kicked off her shoes, hopped up into the booth and soon was detailing the spectacle like some earnest schoolgirl with a science project:
“This was the day Goldsmith Maid, the most famous horse in America, came to the Fairgrounds to try to break the world (trotting) record. Look at all those people. There was a grandstand on one side for men. On the other, for women. The infield’s full, the whole track is surrounded by a crowd. One newspaper report said there were 75,000 people. Imagine that.”
It was October 2, 1874 and it’s doubtful Dayton ever has had a single sporting day quite like it.
City officials issued a traffic flow pattern to get to the new fairgrounds which, back then, were on the outskirts of town. Wagons and buggies going to the track from downtown had to take Main Street. Those returning had to come up Warren Street.
Passenger trains coming to Dayton were jammed. According to one newspaper account, at the Miamisburg rail station alone, over 1,000 people were left stranded on the platform, unable to cram into the over-loaded passenger cars.
Hotels were filled. At the track, there were so many people, they spilled out onto the racing surface where they continually were pushed back by mounted police.
Everybody was here to see the fabled harness mare, Goldsmith Maid, who was unbeaten from 1871 to 1874 and in her career would won 350 heats, 95 of 123 races and $364,200, a mark that stood 60 years. The crowd that saw her in Dayton — when she tied the record of 2:18 — was the biggest of her career.
“Pretty neat, isn’t it?” Margo gushed. “Now look back here.”
xxxxx
LANDMARK GETS FACE-LIFT
She led you into The Sports Room, where a collection of 37 photos of Dayton sports personalities and teams covered the walls.
Margo and her husband Gary — who own the Hickory with Margo’s sister Shirley and their 86-year-old mother, Irene — recently wanted to spruce up the landmark Brown Street restaurant that Irene and her late husband Joe Kiss launched with Irene’s brother and his wife in 1962.
Turning the front dining room into a Dayton History Room and dedicating the back to sports was Margo’s project.
Her work was unveiled at a reception last week that drew quite an assortment of sports types, including: Olympic gold medalist Lucinda Adams, current women’s pro basketball player Megan Duffy, 81-year-old power-lifter Felix Nichalson, hockey’s Moe Benoit, former Major League pitcher Fred Sherman, 91-year-old former Detroit Lions tackle Tony Furst, softball legend Jerry Raiff, Donoher and four Dayton Flyers who played in the NBA, Bucky Bockhorn, Jim Paxson Sr., Monk Meineke and Don May.
The families and friends of another two dozen sports figures also were at the gathering.
“We had three generations all together and it was definitely a neat experience,” Duffy said. “I got to meet some of the Dayton sports legends from back in the day and I thought it was pretty cool, too, that I’m up there on the wall, right next to Tamika Williams and Brandie Hoskins, all of us connected like we are. (They starred at Chaminade Julienne and in college before playing in the WNBA).”
Bucky Bockhorn agreed: “It was a good time. (Margo) did a hell of a job with all the photos and bringing us together. I knew her dad and I’ll tell you, he’d be proud of this.”
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HE LIVED THE AMERICAN DREAM
Joe Kiss, a Hungarian from Romania, immigrated to the United States in 1930. He was just 11 years old.
“He came all by himself with his name safety pinned to his coat,” said George Smith, the longtime Dayton area thoroughbred owner and former Ohio State golf star. “He got off the boat at Ellis Island , couldn’t speak the language and look what he made. He lived the American Dream.”
After Irene, whose also of Hungarian descent from Romania, married Joe, they had three daughters — Jo Ann, Shirley and Margo — and the whole family, as well as in-laws and now grandkids, have worked at the restaurant.
The place became known for ribs, steaks and cabbage rolls and developed quite a following. Beyond his restaurant, one of Joe’s biggest passions was thoroughbreds. He owned several that were handled by Jim Morgan — the former Louisville All America basketball player from Stivers — who launched his celebrated training career on a financial stake from Kiss.
Margo pointed to a Winner’s Circle picture of Grand Action — the Morgan-trained horse owned by her dad and Joe Samu — that had won the Ohio Millionaire Stakes at Thistledown:
“With the race there was a contest tied into the Ohio Lottery and a man named Omar Watts, a Cherokee Indian chief, won $1 million dollars because (through the luck of the draw) he’d been pared with Grand Action.
“He was very poor (according to a newspaper account Watts made $113 a week as a night watchman), had had three heart attacks in four years and two of his kids were living in foster care. When Grand Action won, (Watts) became the first $1 million lottery winner and was able to get his children back home.
“How about that.”
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“I WAS A HELL OF A STUD”
Over the past couple of months, Margo immersed herself in the photo project.
“Her cell phone bill last month jumped from $56 to $400,” said husband Gary, smiling but shaking his head.
With the help of Nancy Horlacher, the history specialist at the Dayton Metro Library, Margo gathered some interesting photos from the city’s past — check out the circus elephants taking a dip in the old Miami-Erie Canal downtown — for the main dining room.
For the pictures in the sports room, she tracked down current and former athletes or their families.
She also put on display a big photo from the Dayton Flyers 1962 NIT victory that her dad had hanging in his office since the 1970s.
Taken on the floor of Madison Square Garden just after UD had beaten St. John’s, it shows fans mobbing coach Tom Blackburn, Flyers big man Bill Chmielewski and teammate Garry Roggenburk.
Some of my favorite photos include one of Donoher — the runners-up trophy in one hand — and then athletics director Tom Frericks standing on the airport tarmac after just getting off the their flight from the NCAA Championship Game in 1967.
There’s also shot of Furst, his mug filling up his leather helmet — which, back then, came with no face mask — running straight at you, just as he would defenders he was about to flatten for Byron “Whizzer” White in the 1940s.
And then there’s the photo of a well-muscled, flat-topped Bockhorn, ripping down a rebound. “Hey, I was a hell of a stud — 6-4, 210,” laughed the 75-year-old Bockhorn when asked about it. Then, with self-deprecating deflection, he said, “Naah, I’m just kidding.”
But the picture shows he was telling the truth and as you go photo to photo, you are left with so many more memorable images.
“Joe Kiss was just the nicest guy of all time, without a doubt,” said Smith. ” He bought more rounds for folks coming into his place than any restaurateur anyplace — ever. You always got something you weren’t quite expecting when you came into his place.”
Here are three of my favorite videos of Michael Jackson in the sports world.
The first is with Muhammad Ali in 1977. Then there’s the 1992 session he had with Chicago Bulls star Michael Jordan for his video “Jam.” Finally, there’s his performance at the 1993 Super Bowl. It’s probably the best halftime performance I’ve seen in 30 years of covering the Super Bowl.
As Joey Votto walked off the field following batting practice before the Reds Futures Game April 4 at Fifth Third Field, I met him at the dugout steps and asked if we could talk for a few minutes.
The Cincinnati Reds first baseman led the way to the end of the dugout, where I asked him something about how it felt being back in Dayton again since he’d played for the Dragons in 2003 and 2004 and was very close to his host family here.
He offered up a couple of Dayton memories with a smile, after which I happened to bring up his dad, who had died last August. I had no agenda, other than I knew I had found it pretty tough when my dad died.
I asked something along the lines of “The season starts in two days and this will be your first Opening Day ever without your dad. Is that tough to deal with? Do you have any special memories of him on Opening Day?”
His face drained. His smile melted and for a good while he said absolutely nothing. “I’m not going to talk about this,” he finally said in little more than a whisper. “I’m not going there.”
I felt bad and it took me a few seconds to regroup. He never did quite refocus on our conversation, which ended a couple of minutes later.
I wrote about that encounter last Saturday night after Votto — who had missed most of a month for what, at the time, was only said to be “a stress-related” incident — played nine innings with the Dragons on a rehab assignment here.
In the Saturday blog, I wrote: “He’s scheduled to play for the Dragons Sunday and that may be especially challenging. It’s Father’s Day and last summer when his dad, Joseph — a Toronto chef and his son’s biggest supporter — died, Votto took the loss especially hard. He took a week off for bereavement, then returned to the Reds and was given some extra time out of the line-up by manager Dusty Baker.
“Before he left, he had asked the club to keep the death quiet until his return. Since then, he’s only talked on a couple of occasions — and very briefly — about losing his father … Sunday, I imagine thoughts of his dad will be swirling beneath the surface.”
By the next day — as is too often the case in the blogosphere — some real cretins came out of the woodwork.
In the internet chat rooms, the sports blogs and every other open web forum, people are able to hide behind a fake name, a catchy moniker — freyourmind and million dollar baby come to mind in this instance — and never have to reveal their identity or take responsibility for what they say.
And so somebody like freyourmind writes: “stress related, what a pus. hey million dollar baby we all have stress I say get over it and get back to your job. In my opinion they are all spoiled brats. peace”
Of course many people were sympathetic, but there were also ones whose comments were so nasty that I either killed them off my blog or erased them from my phone messages. To me you are a coward if you attack someone, but refuse to use your name.
The people who tried to make Votto a pinata — not just on my blog, but at other internet sites and on some sports talk radio shows — questioned everything from his sexuality to his toughness and his commitment and care for his teammates. Their common thread often was their lack of civility and that’s what I hate about the whole blog, open-forum free-for-all that’s now so popular.
Athletes are human, too. Some of these comments hurt them and their families and none of us is any richer for the vilest rants.
And as everyone now knows — three nights after he appeared here in Dayton — Votto, back with the Reds, told reporters in Toronto that the loss of his dad is the thing that put him into the mental tailspin he’s still trying to recover from.
He told how he’s been hospitalized twice, how he experienced panic attacks and called 9-1-1 in Cincinnati. He said he thought he was going to die.
My heart goes out to Votto. To me, it took real courage to address the situation publicly. He’s now working to make himself better. He’s getting counseling, he’s likely got some medication and he should have all our understanding and support.
As for the always-at-the-ready attackers, my guess is they’re not shamed or chastened by any of this. They’ll continue to cloak themselves in their anonymity and wait for someone else to tear down and besmirch.
Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.
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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.
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Amen.