A custom line of products in memory of the late Mrs. Lori Mushovic-Halvorson: http://www.cafepress.com/macwells/1833664

Here is an article that was in a Grand Rapids Press on Dec. 14, 2007.

Lori's tree part of father's tribute

ADA -- It's the season for holiday lights: reds, greens, blues, whites and golds.

But a tree bedecked in pink along Ada Drive offers another holiday message.

That's Lori's tree.

David Lantz hand-painted 400 white tree lights a soft shade of pink and has strung them on a 15-foot spruce in the backyard of his home, 805 Meadowmeade Drive SE.

Last Christmas was his first without his daughter, Lori Lantz Mushovic-Halvorson, a 1989 Forest Hills Central High School graduate who died in April 2006 from breast cancer. She was 34.

The Lantz family usually dives into Christmas. Lantz has dressed up as Santa at past family gatherings and usually decorates the inside of his house and all the trees in the yard where he and his wife, Carol, have lived for more than a dozen years.

"I really didn't want to do anything last Christmas," he said. "Then I thought, maybe I can do something, one tree, for Lori."

He hung a message on a branch of the tree, explaining why the lights were pink and what the tree represented. And he invited anyone else affected by breast cancer to add tributes of their own.

Soon, pink ribbons appeared. This year, a stained-glass angel was added. One day last week, when he drove by after lunch, a large, bright pink bow had been tied to an upper branch.

Mushovic-Halvorson was the oldest of three children with Lantz's first wife, Peggy Lantz, of Houston.

When she learned she had breast cancer, the Houston-based petroleum engineer's penchant for detail took over: She took notes, kept a journal and had her husband, Steve, take photos of her at various stages of treatment.

And, Lantz said, she spent time explaining things to her two sons -- Austin, now 6; and T.J., 8.

"Lori always said she was going to beat it, then she was going to preach it," said Lantz, his voice often breaking with emotion. "It was her intent to share everything she had gone through with other patients."

Lantz, 57, who works in the printing department at Amway headquarters, said he probably never spoke the words "self breast exam" out loud before his daughter was diagnosed.

Now he says them to anyone who will listen. He considers himself a warrior for the cause.

Besides raising awareness with the tree, David Lantz said he intends to carry on his daughter's efforts any way he can.

He and Carol traveled to Houston last year to participate in that city's Race For The Cure. This year, he was a star fund-raiser for the local arm of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

He also completed a CPR course and donated blood.

"When someone you love has cancer, you feel like you're just sitting around, like there's so little you can do," Lantz said. "Those were things I could do and maybe save a life."

And it does one area dad's heart good, he said, to see so many ribbons and other tributes on Lori's tree and know that those who have lost someone to the disease are not alone.