John Richard (Dick) Lancaster died Friday, January 15, just before lunch. He was 80. The COVID got him. Born on the Fall Equinox in 1940 in Bay City, Michigan, and the youngest of three raised in Port Huron, Dickie Lancaster tore up the streets and pool halls along the coast of Lake Huron, and almost didn’t go to college at all after graduating Port Huron High School in 1958. The towering southpaw eventually found his way to Kalamazoo and Western Michigan University (earning a Masters degree by 1975), where he laid the foundation for his life’s most profound successes – in public education, and in Lily. After somehow convincing Lily to marry him, John dragged her back from California to a small town in Michigan called Fennville. There they set about making a life. Dad was not a boastful man, and he never talked a lot about his career to me. I know he loved Chicago talk radio, pounding smelt and Blatz, fishing perch with us out of Stoney Lake during those endless bonfire summers of my youth, and Broncos hockey. I can tell you he was the first non-Hispanic to be recognized for his contributions to the Hispanic communities in the Great Lakes Region. I know he was proud of that award; rather, not the award itself, but the many successes of the individuals implicit behind it. And I know he gave those lives he touched the opportunity to have more for themselves than he’d grown up with himself – in particular example by ensuring the local success of programs in youth recreational sports leagues, in early and extended education for our kids, and in continuing and adult education out in Pearl for anybody else. But what I cannot do is sum up everything this man’s life meant to me in a simple obit. I love you, dad, and I miss you. Give mom a hug from me? John is survived by me (Matthew), my 2 brothers and their wives (Jason & Amanda and David & Allison), altogether no fewer than 6 grandkids (Magnus, Leif, Sven, Luke, Astrid and Lily), my dad’s sister (Mary Wasz), most of his siblings’ kids and my uncle’s kids (Greg, Pam, Margot, Wendy and Rick), and so many people who feel like family that it feels somewhat offensive to try to name you all.
Private Burial Fennville Cemetery, Arrangements by the Chappell Funeral Home, 637 West Main Street, Fennville, Mi 49408.
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