My brother, Larry Lance John

Larry Lance John was born November 18, 1975 in Malad, Idaho.
He was the oldest of four children and the only son of Larry and Terri John. When he was born he didn’t cry-he screeched like a hawk and my dad called him, his “little moose.”

His youth was spent climbing trees, fishing, spending time with his best friend Michael and teasing his little sisters.

Lance took his first steps on his first birthday-all of his cousins were over to celebrate and he just took off running.

When he was three years old he was found walking to Malad elementary school, a school he had only been to once before. It was at this same elementary school while in the 2nd grade Lance got in trouble for repeating the poem, “There is a place in France, where the women wear no pants, and the men go round crawling on the ground.”

On the day my grandfather passed away Lance fell and broke his arm. He didn’t let it stop him, or even slow him down. My mom remembers him resting his casted arm on the handlebars and then climbing the first couple of steps in front of our house to climb on his bike.

He always loved the outdoors and was continually thinking up his next adventure. One summer he and his best friend, Michael, built a raft out of some big long logs our dad was going to use for firewood. It was so heavy that when they put in on the wagon to pull it down to the creek the wagon wheels fell off and so our parents had to help carry it.

Lance spent hours with Michael fishing at the little creek that runs through town and once caught a 15 inch fish, which my parents still have mounted in the basement.

My dad talked about a time he and Lance went fishing on the first day of deer hunting season and that it was so cold outside that the water coming through the eyelets would freeze. Everyone else was deer hunting and they were fishing-the lone fishermen.

Lance love sports especially basketball and baseball and there were countless games of “Around the World”, HORSE and neighborhood baseball games (no fouls) played in our backyard.

Lance, as he said, “Never let the truth get in the way of his stories,” He once even tried to convince us he remembered when his birthday was on Friday, the 13th even though he was born on the 18th of November.

He was a talented artist drawing many pictures of frogs for Sara, and an avid reader. He especially loved the scary stuff.

One of my sisters friends wrote that Lance, “was a smile waiting to happen,” maybe that’s why he was always one to have luck with the girls. I remember once while in high school he showed up for family pictures with a hickey on his neck and the photographer would say, “Okay, now everybody say hickey,” before taking a picture.

When Lance was 17, after attending a “Guns and Roses” concert he got a tattoo on his back of the Guns and Roses album cover. He showed my sister, Sara, the tattoo and told her not to tell my parents about it. He told her that if they found out about the tattoo and got mad that she hadn’t told them about it she should tell them that they never asked her if he had a tattoo. Just a few days after this conversation Lance apparently forgot about his newfound artwork and walked through our front room without a shirt on-right in front of the entire family.

Seven years ago Lance’s life changed dramatically-he said it was the worst and best thing that had ever happened to him; the worst because he had lost a dear friend and the best because it changed his perspective and made his heart bigger.

He was currently a student at Idaho State University and studying Psychology and working at Reed Gym. He was very close to graduating and my mom had said that she would do cartwheels around the mini dome the day he graduated.

The past few years Lance had enjoyed working for Life, Inc., the Outdoor Adventure Center and the Cooperative Wilderness Handicapped Outdoor Group (CWHOG). These are all programs that help people with disabilities do outdoor activities. Lance helped organized activities, wrote grants, and attended as many of these outdoor programs that he could.

In the past few years Lance has dealt with his disabilities learning how to continue to do the things he had loved like fishing and trying new things like dutch oven cooking, riding a hand bike (a bike powered by arms), horse packing and river trips on the Salmon and Green Rivers. He loved these trips and often stated they were his happiest times.

Lance recently posted a story on his facebook account about being at work at Reed Gym, as he walked through a crowd of children a little girl asked him if he was a robot (because of the way he walked) and he told her, of course he was. He then wrote, “There isn’t anything wrong with a child’s imagination, Yeah, I’m a robot sent to protect the imagination of the little ones.”

Lance also loved three more things very much, my sweet girls, his nieces, Anna, Cecilia, and Lilly. When some of my family went to get some things from Lance’s apartment a few days ago, there were pictures of my girls on his walls along with cards they had made him last month for his birthday. He was always so good to them, buying them things and laughing at them when they were naughty and my girls loved him. Well of course they did, he was the protector of their imaginations.

We want it remembered that although sometimes life was hard for Lance, that every time he fell he got back up.

Lance passed away on December 24th, 2009 surrounded by his family and as a family friend said, we just hope there will be some fish left at the fishing hole when we get there.

Love you Lancer.