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| Published March 6, 2004 :: Home |
Letting the Love In
You might call Mike and Jan Downs and their kids the first family of Bellevue Christian School boys basketball. Mike has been the varsity’s quiet, focused head varsity coach for 23 years. Oldest son Daniel was an all-league star for the Vikings’ fifth-place team of 2003, now playing at George Fox University. Youngest son David is 12, the Vikings’ de facto ballboy. Middle son Jeffrey is the team’s best player, though still a callow 15-year-old freshman. Jan is the consummate team mom, sarcastic and goofy enough to feel right at home trading one-liners with the players. She’s the one with cancer. That was her on the other end of Mike’s cell phone that Friday night in mid-December, when the Vikings’ entire season changed. Mike’s wife, a Yakima native — Jan Millard, Eisenhower Class of ’75 — had gone in for a pelvic ultrasound that day to determine the cause of six weeks of abdominal pain and bloating. He called see how she was doing, and the news wasn’t good. “My ovaries,” Jan says now, “were exploding.” It was ovarian cancer. After that conversation with his wife, Mike Downs sat, shocked, staring at the floor, unable to watch the junior varsity game in front of him. A player’s mother asked if he was OK. Tears came to his eyes. The team’s parents had seen that from him on occasion over the years — “That’s an emotion I don’t hide,” he says — and the mom put an arm around him and let him cry. Two days after the telltale ultrasound, Jan Downs underwent a grueling four-hour surgery. Wringing his hands in the waiting room, Mike Downs all but made the decision to turn over the Vikings’ coaching reins to assistants so he could stay home with Jan. The anesthesiologist for Jan’s surgery, the father of one of Mike’s former players, told him that might be a good idea. “But, knowing Jan,” the doctor said, “she’s not going to want you to do it.” The doctor was right. Jan told her husband that Jeffrey, who had watched his dad coach Daniel for four years, would feel slighted if Mike dropped out of the program. “He needs your support,” Jan told him, “as much as I do.” Besides, Jan was about to get more support than she could have hoped for. Because the Downses’ story isn’t one of tragedy. This, rather, is the stuff of a Frank Capra movie, or maybe a Mark Twain saga. Twain — Samuel Clements — as you might recall, gave Tom Sawyer the gift of getting to show up at his own funeral, to hear the love people felt for him, the kind of emotions often not expressed until it’s too late. Capra made movies about people like George Bailey, the selfless hero of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” whose town rallied to him in his time of need. Kind of like the way an entire community has rallied to support the first family of BCS basketball. * * *
The following Friday, Dec. 19, was basketball homecoming night. By that
time, the word was out. The Downs’ 21-year-old daughter, Christi, came to
the game and saw the “JD” emblazoned on her brother Jeffrey’s basketball
shoes and, for a moment, thought about how pompous that was: that he’d put
his initials on his shoes like that.
It was everyone in the school community, from the people who came to the
games to the parents whose children had attended any of Mike’s sixth-grade
classes for the last 23 years or been in Jan’s kindergarten classes. The
word was out, and the Downses’ world was coming in to say it cared. ... and the help came pouring in. The letter generated more than $20,000 that the family can use for medical expenses. With Jan’s chemo-compromised blood count weakening her immune system, Mike has taken on the duties of cleaning, carpooling and shopping, but the latter has been a godsend. “I haven’t paid for a grocery bill since the surgery,” he says, “because of all the gift cards we’ve been given to Safeway and QFC.” Nor have the Downses had to do much cooking. Families were inviting the Downs boys over to dinner at their homes on a regular basis; other friends and supporters began cooking and dropping off meals for the family — so many and so much, in fact, that it became too much.
“We had to put a stop to all the dinners, because we didn’t have any more room in our freezer. It was constipation of the refrigeration,” Jan says with a laugh. “Too much of a good thing.” And even with Mike still teaching and coaching, Jan never has to go alone to a single treatment, blood test or chemo session. Friends are always there to hold her hand, to lift her spirits, to tell her jokes. A longtime best friend and Yakima native has been particularly faithful. “She’s not working right now,” Jan says, “and she said it’s because the Lord knew that, right now, I was to be her job.” The Downs kids have each done their part. Christi and Daniel, both off at college, each call all the time and sneak home from school occasionally to surprise their mom. Sixth-grader David is relentless attentive: “Are you OK? Can I get you anything?” And Jeffrey, who has his mother’s wry wit, provides the comic relief she needs. “How was your day, egghead?” he’ll say when he walks in the door. Or he’ll kiss her on that hairless head and crack, “How’s it going, baldie?” Yes, the hair is gone, courtesy of chemotherapy. Jan wears a hat most of the time now, but says she has no interest in a wig — because, she laughs, she doesn’t want people whispering to each other, “What’s she think, that she looks good in that wig?”
Besides, something Jan misses even more than her hair is the interaction
with her kindergartners; she had to give up teaching because of her
depressed immune system. “That was the hardest part of my diagnosis,” she
says, “knowing I’d have to leave them.”
Jan Downs loved that.
“This is sad, but it’s not a tragedy. It’s life. The tragedy is when people
get this kind of disease and don’t let their friends and family in on it.”
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