Holding On To Life Time Is Precious To Lynn Archibald, Who Is Watching His Son Play Basketball At WSU And Dying Of Cancer

Looking back, as 20-year-old Beau Archibald sometimes does, there were hints.

They surfaced more than a year ago when his father, once a stubborn competitor in any arena, was no longer holding his own - whether on the basketball court or while rough-housing in the living room at the family home in Provo, Utah.

Dad must be getting old, they would joke.

Lynn Archibald knew better. At age 51, this husband and father of three was dying.

“Stuff like that all makes sense,” Beau says now, “but back then we were just like, ‘What the heck’s wrong?”’

The cancer was terminal. Doctors had informed Lynn and Anne Archibald in 1994 that he had three or four years to live - five, if they were lucky.

The couple decided to keep the news to themselves, for the time being, to make sure children Damon, Lee Anne and Beau wouldn’t lose sight of their own aspirations.

Beau, after spending part of last year at a Utah junior college, accepted a basketball scholarship to Washington State University, where he has become the team’s third-leading scorer.

Damon, 24, played at Albertson College of Idaho in Caldwell, Idaho, earning MVP honors as his team won the 1996 NAIA Division II championship.

Lee Anne, 22, graduated from Brigham Young University, took an internship at ESPN and works for David Letterman in New York. (“See that mug?” Beau likes to say when “The Late Show” host takes a sip from his coffee cup. “My sister filled that up.”)

Even Lynn went on pretty much as usual, continuing as an assistant basketball coach at BYU.

But reality was closing in. It still is.

A month after tests indicated he might have another five or six years to live, another bone scan revealed the sickening truth - the prostate cancer had spread inexorably. Lynn might not have five or six months. A year seemed optimistic.

That was in September. By mid-October, shortly after Beau had settled in at WSU, Lynn and Anne decided it was time to start telling people.

The phone call will stay with Beau forever.

“The first time they told me, I was gone, I was gone …” he says, “but I’ve been all right since then.

“It’s there. It’s not going to go away, so you just have to take it. See however long he has. Cherish it.”

On the surface, the decision to withhold Lynn’s condition for some 2-1/2 years defies the principles that had bound their family so closely. But Lynn felt he had little choice.

“They would have all made decisions around me, I knew that,” he says, without regret.

Upon hearing the news, Beau wanted to quit school and return to Provo, but Lynn was a step ahead. With BYU’s blessing, he and Anne would come to Beau.

Lynn remains on the BYU payroll as director of basketball operations, a newly created post that has allowed him to attend Beau’s last 13 games.

“I’m addicted now,” Lynn says. “I get spoiled. I mean, it’s so much fun. You know what’s fun is after the games, more than anything else.

“That’s one of the things, when Beau talked about leaving, I said, ‘Beau, I can go to all of your games now. I’m going to have fun.’ So that helped a lot, I think, and I think it’s helped Beau, too.”

Last month, Lynn and Anne even made it to Hawaii, where WSU played in the Rainbow Classic.

Paradise, it wasn’t.

“Ooooo, I had a bad day,” Lynn recalls. “I got to a point I couldn’t even lift up a glass. I couldn’t move - from the (waist) up almost was paralyzed.”

Doctors were summoned, steroids administered. Suddenly, even before the steroids could take effect, Lynn snapped out of it. Doctors had theories, but no sure explanations.

For Beau, a skilled 6-foot-6 freshman wing, the experience provided a window to his father’s pain, marking the first time he had seen Lynn helpless.

It was hellish, of course, but Beau defiantly resists dwelling on his father’s fate, at least publicly, and grows weary of the unremitting reminders.

“People call me to console me, make sure I’m all right,” he says. “They’ll end up crying on the phone, making me feel bad. It sucks.”

Humor has become a necessity, perhaps as therapeutic as the two dozen pills Lynn might ingest on any given day. Not even the darkest hours are off-limits to a laugh, and no one is safe - least of all Lynn.

“I just sit there and I just make fun of him, get him upset sometimes,” Beau says, recalling in particular the Hawaii trip. “He can’t do anything, he’s just sitting there.

“I’m like this,” Beau goes on, crossing his arms in mock defiance. “‘What are you going to do?”’

Lynn laughs - and gets even.

“Remember that time a couple years ago,” he’ll ask, “when you finally started beating me in basketball?”

Beau remembers, and he can’t argue with cancer.

“He likes to think I beat him because of the cancer,” Beau says, “but the only reason why he ever beat me was because he cheated. He cheated all the time. We have films, dude. You can go look at them and see.

“He’ll go take breaks because he gets out of shape. He’ll go, ‘Aw, my jaw,’ and he’ll go in for like a half-hour, then come back out (and say), ‘All right, I’m feeling better.”’

Several years ago, when Lynn worked under Bill Frieder at Arizona State, he and Beau would rise at 5 in the morning, maybe four days a week, and head over to the arena.

Beau would shoot; Lynn would rebound. Beau would work on ball-handling; Lynn would read the paper in his office.

“The quality time, it wasn’t in the gym,” Lynn says, “it was going to McDonald’s afterward, just sitting there talking about games, or such and such. That’s the quality time, and it was only 10, 15 minutes, but that could be like 10, 15 years of experience there that you’ve put into somebody’s life.”

They miss those days. You can hear it in Lynn’s voice, and sense it when Beau turns away silently.

Lynn speaks with relative ease when detailing the medical aspects of the monster which has terrorized his body, but he cracks when the conversation turns to those summer vacations at the beach.

“If my life stopped today, I’ve had a great life,” Lynn says, tears welling. “I mean, just think of the things that have happened to me the last 25 days with my son, my family, my friends …

“And just think in the last 10 years if I was gone, what I missed. So I look at it that way and think, gee, I could leave right tomorrow and I’ve had a great life. So I don’t even look back on it. I just look ahead and enjoy it.”

It is more complicated for family and close friends. Aside from Anne, they haven’t had 2-1/2 years to prepare.

Marty Holly, who grew up with Lynn in Southern California and coached Damon at Albertson, remembers how he heard the news. A friend had called late one night, passing on a troubling rumor he’d picked up from someone with ties to the BYU hospital system.

“So I called Lynn and he denied it and denied it and denied it,” Holly recalls. “And finally he broke down and admitted it. I just went to my knees in tears and just couldn’t take it. I was out of it and lost it, and he was too.

“And then we got on a conference call to his closest friends - in hindsight, it was coaches who had worked for him. He literally, that night, told everybody he was dying. People thought he was joking. It was unbelievable.”

Lynn was struggling last Monday when Holly visited him in Provo. Not even morphine could impede the pain shooting through Lynn’s back, but the two managed to laugh through the tears.

“We’re sitting there, and he says something like, ‘Gosh, people have been so nice to me,”’ Holly says. “I said, ‘Lynn, who’s not going to be nice to you now?’ And he started laughing.”

Holly remembers some 20 years ago, when his father died. Lynn, then an assistant at USC, was recruiting somewhere on the East Coast, but hadn’t forgotten the days when Holly’s father had taken them to play the horses at Hollywood Park.

“I didn’t even know that he knew my father had died,” Holly says. “And I look up at the funeral as I walk in, and the first person sitting in the front row was Lynn. And I was just amazed. He got to Redlands, Calif., I don’t know how.”

Stanford assistant Trent Johnson was also on the fateful conference call. He got his coaching start under Archibald more than a decade ago, when Lynn was head coach at Utah. Over the years, Johnson became a second father to the Archibald children (“If my sister gets married,” Beau half-jokes, “Trent has to approve of the guy. He’s that kind of guy with us.”).

When WSU played Stanford in Palo Alto, it was Johnson’s turn to see his mentor for the first time since hearing the news. He was overcome.

“It just doesn’t seem fair,” Johnson says. “He gave … he gave me the opportunity to get to this level, but I think it’s bigger than a professional issue. We’re close.”

Fresno State coach Jerry Tarkanian, who gave Lynn his start in coaching nearly 25 years ago, breaks down at the thought. He and Lynn worked together at Long Beach State and UNLV, and remain tight.

Two weeks ago, Lynn and Anne flew to Fresno to see Tarkanian coach against UNLV. (Sadly, Anne’s mother, who lived near Fresno, died just prior to their visit, after an illness.) Several years before, the Archibald family had flown unannounced to Las Vegas for the Shark’s last game as a Runnin’ Rebel.

“I’ve known Lynn as well as anybody,” a trembling Tarkanian says. “One of the finest men I’ve ever known in my whole life. And his family is just wonderful. I can’t even talk to him without crying. Every time I call him, I start crying.”

And he is crying again.

Beau seems to be handling it better than most. He doesn’t invite sympathy. “Beau is not the type to open up,” said freshman teammate Justin Mott, a former roommate. “We didn’t even know it was happening. Then he told a couple people.

“He doesn’t want to talk about it. He knows what’s going on. If he wants help, he knows he can always come to one of us.”

On the court, Beau’s a creator, having studied films of Pete Maravich and Rick Barry, to name two of his favorites. A point guard in high school, he’s been asked to shoot more at WSU, and he can hit the 3. Through 20 games, he’s averaging 7.3 points in about 17 minutes.

If it were his style, Beau might find support from coach Kevin Eastman, whose mother died of cancer when Eastman was a toddler, or from Mott, whose father died three years ago. Instead, he seeks strength where he has always found it - in his family.

The Archibalds are so close that they say Lynn’s illness hasn’t been used as a unifier. Damon and Lee Anne have visited more often - Lee Anne even flew in during WSU’s Stanford trip - but there are apparently no loose ends that need tying.

“It really hit home,” Lynn confides, “when my kids told me, ‘There’s not one thing, Dad, we could tell you right now that we didn’t tell you yesterday.”’

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