Janiece Liske Jones

 

Janiece Liske Jones

Janiece Liske - sweet, pleasant, cheerful - is that girl in school who everybody likes.

Life isn't complicated for a kid who's the oldest of five and regularly accused of being "too bossy" by her younger siblings. That's why teachers like her, too. In my sophomore English class, she's a dream student who hands in every assignment and never complains. High school drama is a foreign idea to Janiece Liske. 

The GICC 1981 state championship volleyball
team 40 years later. Front: Asst. coach Mary
Janky, head coach Sharon Zavala. Back from
left: Mary Curtis, Theresa Costello, Dorine 
Lucht, Mary Brown, Chris Jarecke,
Janiece Liske and Kate Stokman

Part of a close-knit little tribe of girls and boys from the Grand Island Central Catholic class of 1982, Janiece, in spite of her uncomplicated nature, surprises everyone with her steely determination. The fall of her senior year, she and her gritty teammates snare the Class C1 state volleyball championship - the first ever. My little sister Mary is on that team, as well as some funny and wonderful girls like Monica Kozisek, Chris Jarecke, Kate Stokman, Dorine Lucht, Mary Curtis, Karla Rork, and Theresa Costello. They've all been through stuff, big stuff, these girls. Some have lost family members - a parent, a brother, a sister. One suffers from juvenile diabetes. Maybe it's the adversity in their young lives that gives these kids the guts to spit in the wind and battle for a state championship. Whatever it is, the entire GICC faithful cheers in frenzied delight from the stands at Pershing Auditorium as our bold little girls receive their championship medals.

Pat and Janiece, 1981 GICC Homecoming

One of those fervent fans is Pat Jones, Janiece Liske's boyfriend. Pat and Janiece are inseparable - not in a spoony way, but in a "this is my very best pal" sort of way. Only one time in her life has Janiece ever really caused her parents grief.  It's the last night of her sophomore year when she talks to Pat for the first time at an end-of-the-year party and misses curfew. As far as Janiece is concerned, the wrath of her parents is entirely worth it. The next morning, however, when Pat shows up at the Liske doorstep, Janiece's mother takes one look at him and slams the door. It's Janiece's father Leo who saves the day.

"Oh, now, come on in," he opens the door and ushers Pat into the house. Pat sits awkwardly in the living room with Janiece's angry mother and prays with all his heart for Janiece to hurry up.

Thankfully, Maxine Liske warms to Pat in the weeks to come and will one day consider Pat to be another son. Indeed, that's exactly what he becomes. Almost immediately after high school graduation, Pat and Janiece marry in a simple wedding at their hometown church.

"I know it seems crazy for a couple of 18-year-olds to get married," Janiece says now, "but we just knew we belonged to each other."

Janiece, bottom left, with her parents and
siblings. Next to Janiece: her father Leo,
mother Maxine, sister Jill. Top from left, 
brothers Joe, Jim and Jarrod

Soon, babies are arriving. Jennifer is born first followed by her sister Jaci. Mike is the youngest. Life is full and happy for the young Joneses. Pat helps run the family business, the long established Ron's Music. Janiece joins him after Pat's mother becomes ill to take care of the books. As the kids grow, Pat coaches his daughters' softball teams, and he and Janiece send their kids to their beloved alma mater, Central Catholic.

 Always sweet and ornery in high school, Pat is a doting, fun and adventurous dad as well. One Fourth of July, he and Janiece host a party for their kids and their kids' friends who fill the front yard with their games and antics. Janiece slips across the street to visit a neighbor when she's suddenly aware of how empty her front yard has become.

Curious, she walks back searching for her husband and the gaggle of kids who are supposed to be under his watch. In the empty house, she climbs to the second floor just in time to see one of her son's friends standing outside the bedroom window on the roof. Below she hears a chorus of young voices.

"Jump! Jump!"

Alarmed, she pulls the boy back inside and demands to know what he's doing. 

"Mr. Jones moved the trampoline next to the house so we could all jump on it from the second floor," the boy sheepishly explains. "He said it's what he and friends used to do."

Janiece, steady and cautious, is sometimes bewildered by Pat's daring attitude.

"You only live once!" Pat always advises his kids and young friends. "Go do stuff! Don't wait!"

It's the way Pat approaches life - with zest, humor and compassion. At Christmas time he purchases gifts for disadvantaged kids. One boy requests a basketball, and Pat looks long and hard for THE best basketball. When he coaches softball, he buys uniforms and pitching machines with his own money. As well, Pat is an avid bear hunter and looks forward with all his heart to his yearly hunting trip.

Pat, two months before his death, with Janiece,
Jennifer and her husband Andy, Mike and Jaci.

Pat and Janiece are happy people enjoying life and the pursuits of their young family. 

Pat is just 44-years-old when he reports to the doctor for his routine checkup. His blood tests, the nurse tells him, reveal some concerns. Even though Pat is a young man, he's advised to have a colonoscopy. Pat and Janiece think nothing of it when Dr. Crouch asks them to stop in his office and are hardly prepared for the news. 

"Pat, there's no easy way to tell you this," Dr. Crouch says gently. "It's colon cancer."

Stunned, Pat and Janiece struggle to absorb the news but rally quickly. Pat is young and will surely beat this, they wholeheartedly believe.

After an operation to resect part of his colon, Pat immediately starts chemotherapy treatment. He schedules his yearly bear hunting trip in Canada and looks forward to having the entire messy cancer episode behind him. But when his condition doesn't improve, he and Janiece travel to Mayo Clinic for another operation. The cancer has spread aggressively, his doctor tells him after the surgery. Now, the goal is only to make Pat as comfortable as possible.

"I had to stay strong for the kids," Janiece remembers. She also had to keep the business going. Of those difficult days, Janiece remembers the tremendous support she and Pat receive from their Central Catholic community, family and friends.

In spite of his terminal diagnosis, Pat's determined to travel to Canada for his bear hunt. Janiece is very much against the idea until her younger sister Jill, wise beyond her years, tells Janiece to let him go.

"He needs to do this," she advises Janiece.

Three weeks after his surgery at Mayo's, Pat leaves for Canada and comes back with two bears, one with a record-setting skull size.

Janiece with kids Jaci, Mike and Jennifer.

When he is bedridden just before his death, Janiece and his kids are at his side. Pat depends on his son-in-law Andy, Jennifer's husband, to carry him back and forth. They are all with him as Pat takes his last breath.

"Our kids were unbelievable," Janiece says. "I couldn't have gotten through it without them."

The Grand Island Central Catholic community, friends and classmates of the Joneses are stunned by Pat's death. We wonder how Janiece, a young widow, will cope with the loss of her husband, a business to run on her own, and life as a single mother.

Janiece with her grandchildren

Janiece Liske Jones, however, refuses to have people coddle her. She's still that spunky high school kid who played volleyball like a little pit bull terrier. 

"I had a decision to make," she says now. "I could cry and feel sorry for myself, or I could put on my big girl panties and fake being happy until it was real."

She chooses the latter. In the years after Pat's death, she decides to foster cats without homes. Her growing children marry and produce grandchildren. Daughter Jennifer and husband Andy give Janiece her first two grandchildren, Bella and Ryder. Jaci marries Sam Puente, and they add son Boston and  daughter Harper to the growing family. Mike marries his Megan, and Megan gives birth to Nolan. All Janiece's grandsons are given the middle name Patrick by their parents.

One summer in 2011, she's asked by the now late Bob Sorenson to help with the ABCDD softball league. Janiece, thinking it will be good for her to be active during the summer, has no idea how involved she will become. Currently, she serves as commissioner for the league which serves 650 girls' softball players. In 2011, however, she's only hoping for something to do to fill her summers, and it's there that she meets Bill Leach, a long time umpire for girls' fastpitch softball. Bill, like Janiece, will become very involved and serve as the Nebraska District 5 Commissioner and UIC (Umpire in Charge). Then, however, he's just a single father working hard at his softball duties who thinks the new lady, Janiece Jones, is very nice.

Bill and Janiece

It never occurs to Janiece that she will fall in love again. Bill Leach is a good guy, she thinks, and she enjoys hanging out with him at the softball fields. Still, he's nothing like Pat. For one thing he smokes, a habit Janiece detests. For another he's not Catholic, a sticking point for Janiece. Lastly, he's between jobs.

"Strike three!" Janiece laughs now.

After softball season ends, though, she discovers herself missing Bill's easy banter. He misses her, too. In 2012 they seal the deal to become an official couple.

"It was nice to feel I had a best friend again," she says. They introduce their kids to each other.

"Bill's kids became my bonus kids," Janiece says about Bill's daughter BaiLeigh and son Brennin.

Life was "super great," Janiece says. She and Bill share their softball duties, love attending their grandkids' activities, and love each other - quirks and all.

Janiece with foster kitties

Bill finds it difficult to quit smoking - a habit he's promised Janiece he will conquer. She catches him one day standing innocently in the yard. Then she notices the curls of smoke rising from the grass where Bill has hurriedly tossed his cigarette as he hears Janiece approach.

Bill, for his part, is living with a woman who houses homeless cats and all other manner of critters. One day Janiece's little black foster cat hops without warning into their burning fireplace. Janiece screams, and Bill, rushing to the fireplace, orders her to leave the room. Somehow he manages to steer the traumatized cat out of the fire who, miraculously, suffers only a few singed whiskers. 

Janiece is beyond grateful to be living with a man as besotted by her many foster cats as she is.

She is not enamored, however, with a pair of doves who continuously coo at the top of their chimney. They drive Janiece to distraction, but Bill loves the sound of the birds singing their love language to each other. 

Janiece can hardly believe she's been lucky to find a best friend again in Bill - a man so different from Pat in every way but just as loved. As with Pat, she and Bill are inseparable. They manage the softball league together, bowl together, cheer the Huskers together. Their grandchildren are the pride and joy of their lives.

Then the unthinkable happens again.

On a Monday evening late in March, Bill comes home tired and crashes on the couch. Janiece thinks nothing of it until the next morning. Bill doesn't wake up, and Janiece can't rouse him. Frantic, she calls an ambulance, but it's too late. 

Bill Leach, only 54 years old, has died.

Once again it is Janiece's children who rally around their mother. Jaci comes every night to stay with her mother. Mike arrives to comfort her, and Jennifer, Janiece's oldest, deals with Bill's business colleagues. Bill's son and daughter, in spite of their terrible grief, do their best to support Janiece, too.

Her sister Jill flies in for the funeral all the way from Saipan to be with Janiece.

"I've been thinking," Jill says, "how lucky you were to be blessed twice in a lifetime." 

Bill and Janiece surrounded by their kids
and grandkids

Her little sister's words are a balm. Sitting in her living room one day after the funeral, Janiece notices that, oddly, only one dove remains at the top of the chimney cooing its lonely love song. With her furry companions and her single dove, Janiece forces herself again to enter the land of the living.

She's hardly caught her breath when, two months after Bill's death, another bolt from the blue shatters her existence. She receives a call in the middle of the day that her youngest brother Jarrod has been in motorcycle accident. Without a thought, she rushes to her car and drives to the site of the accident. It's then she realizes her single dove has darted down from the chimney and flies next to her car. Whatever she is about to find at the crash site, she tells herself, Bill is by her side.

Her brother Jarrod does not survive, and Janiece, with the help of her brother Jim, must inform her parents of their youngest son's death. Life has never seemed as bleak or as hopeless as it does now. 

It's been two years since the passing of both Bill and Jarrod. Though still fragile, Janiece has chosen once again to be happy. She cries, she laughs, she remembers, and she's grateful. Above all, she has no interest in being the lady everybody feels sorry for. Janiece Liske Jones will always choose to be happy. 

"I guess I've always taken it for granted that I'll see the people I love again," she says. "I believe we'll be reunited, and I'm not afraid of death. I get angry with God," she says, "but I know he can take it. I don't know exactly what his plan is, but I can be patient and wait to find out."

In the meantime, there are kids and grandkids and bowling and cats and softball leagues and Huskers to claim her attention. 

Janiece chooses, as she does every day, to enjoy the many blessings in her remarkable life.