Rick Lasseter should be teeing it up this morning with his buddies at Brown Acres or Moccasin Bend. After all, it’s Friday, which was the day they always set aside for golf.
Instead, “the old hippie” – as the bearded Lasseter often called himself – is looking down today on the city’s finest public layouts, having lost a brief but gritty bout to the Big C on Tuesday.
To say we were close pals would be a stretch. We were neighbors separated by eight years (Rick the older at 62) who shared a deep love for the Boston Celtics, for all things college basketball, for cold beer, spicy-hot food, politics, art and gardens – both those with creaky parquet floors and those that grew the biggest, best tomatoes on Lookout Mountain (his, not mine).
He also was an endless source for child-rearing advice, he and Karen having raised four remarkable and independent kids during their 39 years together – Sunshine, Treasure, Faerlie and Mac – as well as spoiling four pixie-perfect grandchildren (Meadow, Harry, Camper and Scout).
Or as Treasure said Thursday, “He was the best ‘Grandy’ you could ever dream of – incredible storyteller, always the conversationalist. And no sleepover for the grandkids was complete until they’d had Grandy’s pancakes.”