Spiritual life remains for Allen Throop

Sunday Notebook

By Jeff Welsch
Sports Editor

At first sensing and then finally inviting the inevitable, Allen Throop spent his final few days saying good-bye to his favorite son, his favorite daughter and his favorite wife.

On Monday, he reluctantly but peacefully said good-bye to his favorite life.

Allen, whose periodic Venture stories took our readers to extraordinary places in the American West, died at age 59 after a brief but noble struggle with that cruelest of diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

I didn't know Allen long, but I certainly knew him long enough.

I appreciated him early for his ability to paint vivid pictures of such places as Yellowstone National Park, the northern Rockies and Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge.

I appreciated him late for his unwavering spirit and determination to squeeze every ounce of opportunity from the creeping tentacles of his body's limitations.

I appreciate him now for showing me how to die with dignity, grace and even humor.

And I'll always smile at the way he somehow wove "my favorite wife," Janet, into his stories about hiking, cycling and, in his final months, wheelchair riding in his beloved outdoors.

It always seemed unfair to me that someone so vibrant, so adventurous and so connected to the world around him would suffer such a fate.

Yet if Allen thought such thoughts, it was darkness shown inward.

He saw himself on the same track as everyone else, except that the fates had pushed the fast-forward button on his life.

To Allen, it only meant that every moment was just that much more precious.

Last summer, when friends and family gathered for a "wake" at one of his favorite places, Beazell Memorial Forest near Wren, Allen listened to one glowing story after another and then, through twinkling eyes, quipped, "when I'm gone you can say what you really think."

Well, suffice it to say nothing has changed except that the eyes, spirit and dignity have evolved from the physical to the spiritual.

He's still our favorite Allen Throop.

Print this story

Email this story