Patrick Swayze
Gifted, charismatic actor and dancer Patrick Wayne Swayze was born in Houston, Texas, on August 18, 1952. His mother, Patsy, was a choreographer, dance instructor, and the director of the Houston Jazz Ballet Company, and dance was a part of Patrick’s life virtually since he took his first baby steps. His father, Jesse, who died in 1982, was a champion rodeo rider and an engineering draftsman. Patrick, his two sisters, and his two brothers were raised in the Houston suburb of Oak Forest, and from elementary school through high school he put his exceptional skills to a wide variety of uses, excelling in everything from ballet and gymnastics to football, swimming, and ice skating to performing in school plays.
After two years at Houston’s San Jacinto College, Patrick was hired as a dancer and ice skater, playing Prince Charming on a national tour of “Disney on Parade.” When the tour ended and he returned to Houston, he met Lisa Niemi, a sixteen-year-old student in his mother’s dance classes. He moved to New York in 1972 to pursue his dance career, and Lisa joined him there when she graduated from high school. They were married in 1975, a marriage that lasted for the rest of his life.
Complications from knee surgery forced Patrick to shift his focus from a promising ballet career to acting, and in 1976 he debuted on Broadway in a production of Goodtime Charley, followed by a revival of the classic West Side Story. But it was his starring role in Grease in 1978 that attracted the attention of Hollywood.
His television and film work on the West Coast was steady since its beginning in 1979’s Skatetown U.S.A., including a prestigious nod from Francis Ford Coppola for a film called The Outsiders. There’s no question, though, that it was in 1987
that he officially became a star thanks to his versatile, multitextured performance in Dirty Dancing. His confident physicality made him an obvious choice for the action films that followed, but his next real “star” vehicle came in 1990 with the paranormal love story Ghost. Both Dirty Dancing and Ghost earned Patrick lead actor Golden Globe nominations.
People magazine’s 1991 “Sexiest Man Alive” had been battling an alcohol problem since the death of his father in 1982, and in
1994, after his sister’s suicide, he voluntarily checked into a rehab clinic and then recuperated with his wife, Lisa, out of the spotlight, at the two ranches where they bred Arabian horses. He returned to the screen in 1995 as a drag queen in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar and was rewarded with his third Golden Globe nomination.
The next few years brought a combination of film work and physical injuries, including a broken leg from a horseback-riding accident and carbon monoxide exposure while flying his private plane. But it was in January 2008 that real tragedy struck—Patrick Swayze was diagnosed with stage IV (inoperable) pancreatic cancer. He immediately began treatment at the Stanford University Medical Center, while the tabloids began offering an endless barrage of photographs and updates, only some of which were accurate, but which made his battle intensely public whether he wanted it to be or not. His appearance on a rare network simulcast of the television special Stand Up to Cancer in September 2008 helped raise money and awareness on behalf of cancer patients around the world.
The finale of Patrick’s career was the lead in an A&E Network series called The Beast. It premiered in January 2009, the same month in which he was hospitalized with pneumonia and in which he revealed during a Barbara Walters interview that doctors had found a “tiny little mass” in his liver. His deteriorating health made it impossible for him to promote The Beast, and it was cancelled in June 2009, while the tabloids continued to feature photos of him, painfully and increasingly gaunt, with his wife, Lisa, by his side, as she’d been for almost forty years. On September 14, 2009, Patrick Swayze lost his battle with pancreatic cancer at the age of fifty-seven. His ashes were scattered at his beloved horse ranch in New Mexico.
It’s also very much worth mentioning that John and Lucille Ball, kindred souls on earth and on the Other Side, had an ecstatic reunion when John emerged from his time at the Scanning Machine to resume his busy life. They often socialize and perform together, and it hasn’t escaped their notice that the causes of their respective deaths were very similar: John’s was a tear in his aortic wall, Lucy’s was a ruptured aorta. As a result, the two of them have begun taking courses in cardiovascular genetic disorders and imaging toward the goal of becoming part of our vast network of coronary researchers. John sends the message, “Please thank everyone involved in publishing the rules,” and adds, “They’ll know who and what I mean.” [From Sylvia: My staff checked the Internet and found “Ritter Rules,” which are described as “life-saving reminders to recognize, treat and prevent thoracic aortic dissection.” You can find a discussion of Ritter Rules at http://cbs2.com/local/john.ritter.heart.2.1565915.html.]
John has also returned to his work as an Orientator in the oxygen chambers, where he’s treasured for his unique blend of faith, comfort, and humor among the new arrivals who need Orientation care. He and his father live in a modest house near their old friends Jesse and Patrick Swayze, the four of them sharing the idyllic, fenceless horse ranch they’ve always loved.
He doesn’t plan to reincarnate, believing that from now on he can accomplish more on the Other Side and be of greater service than he ever could on earth. And, he adds, “With the exception of being here, I could never ask for more than I was blessed with that last time around.”
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