John has been woven into the fabric of my life since I was 15 years old and he was 19. We met in Woodstock, Vermont in 1980. We saw each other every summer during high school and college. Although John claimed to have loved me at first sight (when he saw me with my horse Eddy behind B Barn at GMHA), I wasn’t so sure… and I wasn’t ready. But John was steady and true, as he was in everything he did. He waited. In 1988 after a few years of world travel and some infrequent letters to John, something brought us together again. John claims to actually have given up on waiting for me, shortly prior to my arrival in Woodstock that summer. Rachel and I were living at Smoke Rise Farm in Woodstock Vermont. I called John just to say hi, I was back in the US and wanted to see him. I told Rachel I was meeting John Lancaster and I’d be back later as surely I wouldn’t be spending the night with him…I called her later to say I would be spending the night with him. We stayed in his brother Rick’s house on his family property, Turkey Hollow Farm. That was the start of me realizing that I wanted him forever and ever.
John has been part of everything I accomplished after the age of about 22. He was in Vail skiing and regularly took time off to travel the world with me, and to be by my side as I marched through multiple graduate programs. He came to Israel where I was living with my family at Kibbutz Yassur and studying Hebrew in Jerusalem. He tried hard to fit in to the Kibbutz life but for many reasons he was clear that he could not stay. When he announced he was leaving, without a moment’s hesitation, I said I would go with him. In my mind I dreaded the thought of moving to Vail. Although I was a world traveler and had friends everywhere, there was no place on earth I would rather be than with him, even if it was Vail, CO! We left Israel on a boat and as we watched Haifa slowly fade out of view, I had no doubts about my choice to stay with John.
I moved to Vail, tried to fit in there. Had some fun teaching snowboarding and saw up close how integral he was to Vail Ski School. But Vail was not a place I felt at home, and John knew that. He continued to love and support me and I left for summers and sometimes years doing foreign language study, graduate programs in London, Boston, then in Denver. And he knew from the moment I moved to Vail that I would be leaving at some point. He told me he would go anywhere and do anything to stay with me.
When I announced I was going to vet school, in Michigan no less (because I wanted to work with the esteemed Dr. Bowker), John made the decision to change careers. He had always wanted to fly. He spent several months driving around the country visiting flight schools. He didn’t want to like Helicopter Adventures Inc (HAI) because it was in Florida, where he did not want to live. Yet John insisted on doing things right. He told me that although the schools in other states might have been nicer places to live, he had to go to the best place, and that was without a doubt, HAI. This was his reason for choosing Vail too. Over the years in Vail he had job offers from other ski resorts, and I often asked him to move somewhere else so I could live in a “real” town. But Vail was the best, and if he was a skier, that was his home. He would leave when he was ready to be something besides a skier. So for flight training, there was no comparison to HAI.
After he finished the program at HAI, he looked around for jobs. A similar pattern repeated itself. Minneapolis wasn’t the most fun climate to live in. It did have an advantage of being not to far from Lansing, Mi where I was at vet school. But what really caused him to choose the job at Hummingbird Aviation in Minnesota was his impression of the flight school and most important, of Chris Cooper who owned the operation. John’s respect for Chris was huge. John loved working at Hummingbird.
It was working there that he met his friend Patrick. John had many friends in aviation. Patrick was the one he cared about the most.
John knew that after I graduated from vet school, my goal was to get back to Denver. He was ready to leave Hummingbird because he wanted to fly what Patrick had been flying! Again, he looked at the choices of companies where he would get to fly turbine helicopters. He chose ERA, after looking at several options. He loved the operation there, he loved the people, and most of all he loved the flying.
John was involved in all my work from studying for exams to writing papers to completing graduate school. My masters thesis, my PhD thesis, a book on horse feet, my website, articles in farrier journals, power point research presentations, all my client handouts and much more…. John helped me write. Some of the things published under my name actually have more of John’s writing (in the final versions) than my own.
Vet school was the hardest thing I have ever experienced until now, when I must experience the world without John by my side. He helped me get through vet school, and he helped me with the best part of it: my research in the Equine Foot Lab.
I do not know how to be in the world without him, but I will learn. Because that is what he would have wanted. It’s what he would expect of me. He always knew I would somehow be OK without him, and I knew this about him. It was part of the attraction of us being together. We complemented each other perfectly. But we knew from an early age that we each had strong drives in life. Our love for each other, as immense as it was, would not stop us from each following our own path. My network of friends and family spans the globe. Almost every one of my friends also knew John. His memory will live on through many people.
About 12 hours after his helicopter exploded early in the morning, I was informed by ERA that no bodies had yet been found and the Coast Guard had called off the search. Wendy at ERA told me the company would continue their own search and she had full confidence they would find the bodies. I thought it was just something they did as a gesture, like how in medicine CPR is performed on a dead person so the doctors can tell the family they did everything they could. That night when I went to bed thinking John’s body might never be found, I had a dream that the Coast Guard was informed that since the explosion was so large, bodies could be anywhere, and they had better expand their search to the entire galaxy. The dream was a like an episode of X-Files: investigators scanning the cosmos with giant searchlight beams, Scully saying to Mulder, “There has got to be an explanation…” It seems appropriate that John’s spirit could be anywhere in the galaxy, as all his friends and family can now attest when his presence makes itself known in our daily lives. Many people have noticed throughout John’s life that he was somehow not entirely of this earth. His “other-worldly” qualities were apparent to everyone. In 1988 when we first lived together as a couple, I used to ask him “where are you from?” Because I was sure he was not from this earth.
There was a song released in 1988 that captured the ethereal quality about him. We used to listen to this (and every other song) together. I listen now and I cry with sadness at the loss of his physical presence in my life. But amidst my tears I can smile too, at the fortune of having had him in my life for the past 26 years. John loved his life, and he loved to spread goodness everywhere he went. John’s life force will never go away because it remains as a guide in the lives of everyone who knew him.
A verse from “Walk and Talk Like Angels” by Toni Childs {Union, A&M Records, 1988}
You walk like the angels talk
Where are you from
You want to walk and talk like the angels talk
Tell me then some
With a room by the sea
And a voice in the sand
Telling me your truth
And telling me your view
In how you see the world
Spinning, spinning round
And what is love and what is death
And fears you have to put to rest
So you walk like the angels….
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