Published: July 15, 2008 03:54 pm            

ROOT: Lomas — a real-life hero

I kid around a lot with saying that particular people are my hero. In reality I have people I respect and look up to but I am not sure if I have any real heroes. But there is one person that I can come close to classifying as a hero to me and once I tell you his story he should be your hero too. This is a true story and the main characters in it are real. The names have been changed to protect the innocent but the events are real.

I have a rock band that I was lucky enough to start with my brother and include a very close friend of mine as my drummer when the band started. After about a year my brother just didn’t have the time and decided to call it quits so we got someone else to take his place. During that year my band had started to play shows and my drummer had lots of friends that would come to our shows. One person that came to nearly every one of our shows was Lomas. My drummer friend introduced me to Lomas and we became friends as well.

Lomas is an energetic guy that seems to have no problem being the center of attention. He is one of those guys that everyone likes after they meet him and I have yet to find anyone that has anything bad to say about Lomas. Lomas loves a good time and loves to have his fair share of the drink of life as it were. He has a lot of stories about his partying days when he was younger and he tells them with an energy that makes it impossible to avoid laughing at the punch line regardless of what that punch line is.

My drummer, myself, and Lomas are all part of an online community that we use to pass the time with other people in Western New York. Like any message board there are silly little fights but all in all it is a place to go to stay in touch with the people you want to stay in touch with and pick random fights with everyone else. A few weeks ago I was reading the message board thinking about some of the people I had not seen in a while. Lomas was one of those people as we had not had the chance to cross paths in a couple of months. On this particular day I was reading the message board and noticed a post that Lomas had created earlier that morning. Lomas had cancer and he told the world he was scared but ready to get healthy.

Of course everyone on our online community wished Lomas well and we all hoped and prayed for the best. But as Lomas kept posting about his day to day experiences with cancer and the chemo treatments he was undergoing something wonderful was happening. That energy he has, that energy you can sense when you meet him in person but had never come through before in his Internet posts, was there. Now, suddenly, he was inspiring everyone to believe that he was going to get better and that energy he has was really coming through.

Lomas was keeping everyone updated in great detail as to what treatments he was going through and how they were affecting him. It seemed like a double sided therapy. It was good for Lomas to get everything out in the open so he wasn’t carrying it around with him and it also helped his friends see that he still in good spirits and everything was going very well.

I finally got to see Lomas yesterday and he looks fantastic. He willed himself through the first few chemo treatments and just kept posting on the Internet how he was not going to let any of this bring him down. He was just as energetic as I have ever seen him and there was not one bit of self-pity about him. It was good to see him and it was good to see all of the friends that were around him yesterday letting him know that we were all behind him.

Lomas is still fighting but I don’t think the cancer has a chance. He was a beacon of positive energy right from the start. He never gave up and he never once said that he thought this thing might be the end of him. He is an inspiration to anyone with a terminal disease and if anyone out there is looking for a hero, a real life hero, I nominate my friend Lomas.

George N. Root III is a Lockport resident. He blogs at http://rootsworld.wordpress.com. Send comments to georgeroot@verizon.net.

        

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