Lynn Meisse (Miller)

Lance rest in peace

Janice Arline Martin

Will always remember you.

Carl Levi

Lance James Weber -  May 30, 1947  - January 22, 1997

Lance was my first, best friend, from the time we were 3 ½ years old.  We were classmates from kindergarten through our junior year at BHS. During that year we were both awarded scholarships to Phillips Exeter Academy for the following year.  Lance chose to go and I passed on mine.

Lance attended the University of Colorado in Boulder his freshman year until about two weeks before 2nd semester finals when he fractured his neck in a motorcycle accident.  That didn’t kill him, but it definitely shook him for a while. He got over it but didn’t return to school.  He was seriously into motorcycles and started a bike shop in Boulder that unfortunately went under after two employees ripped him off and ruined the business.  He was joined in Boulder for a while by John Benson, Ellen’s older brother. Lance then moved to Aspen and went to work for a bike shop there until going to work for the Aspen Ski Corp.  He started as a ski patrolman and eventually ended up running their snowmobile/snowcat, etc. shop at Snowmass-At-Aspen. 

Lance married his wife, Gretchen, a nurse, at a restaurant halfway up the Snowmass ski area. The newlyweds skied out from the restaurant under the crossed ski poles of a large ski patrol honor guard and ended up living on ten acres in nearby Basalt.

Lance earned his pilot’s license and also managed the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport for a good while, later joining the Pitkin County Sheriff’s office as a deputy.  Our boyhood interest in guns led Lance to become one of the Colorado Governor’s Top Twenty pistol shooters at one point.  He also became an expert in the handling of small arms, which eventually led him to become a small arms trainer for SWAT teams and bodyguards.  In fact, he was expert enough in that field that he was developing a very thorough training manual for other SWAT team trainers, though he never got to finish it.  His exceptional intelligence showed itself not only in how he handled himself as a law enforcement officer, but in his development of things such as the “RFR” as well, a law enforcement  training program he developed which was the subject of a 2006 article in the Aspen Times.  There’s an article about it at
 http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20061202/ASPENWEEKLY/112030050     Lance is mentioned about halfway down.

I visited Lance one weekend years ago when I was coming back from an meeting on Indian education and had a stop in Denver on Friday afternoon.  I decided to change flights and hop the mountains into Aspen to see him.  We had a great time and on Monday morning he dropped me off at the Aspen airport on his way to work at the Sheriff’s Department.  On the way there he stopped at a hardware store, went in and came back with a length of heavy chain.  When I asked what it was for he told me that he was flying Ted Bundy - yes, that Ted Bundy - from the jail in Aspen to a Colorado prison later that day.  The chain was for Bundy’s restraints during the flight, as it would be just the two of them in the plane. Lance had been on the manhunt for Bundy in the mountains after Bundy had escaped, but Bundy was later caught during a traffic stop in Aspen.

Lance later left the Sheriff’s Department to set up and run an armory business, reloading all types of practice ammo for the majority of the many law enforcement agencies in Colorado.  The Practical Police Course for live fire pistol shooting was set up in his back yard where he  conducted the training sessions.

Sadly, sometime in the late ‘80s or early ‘90's Lance began to develop an irreversible condition which caused a steady buildup of cholesterol in his arteries. Even the Mayo Clinic couldn’t do anything for him.  Being one who certainly didn’t want pity, he never said anything about it and I didn’t find this out until after he had passed away in 1996.  The last time I saw him was at Damie’s and my wedding on the Navajo Reservation in 1990 and he seemed just fine.

Lance was an avid hunter and shooter for many years.  He eventually had to give up hunting due to his condition, but he was still able to successfully compete in 1,000 yard benchrest rifle matches up to the end. Being an expert machinist, he built his own benchrest rifles, including rifling his own barrels.  He was driving through Moab, Utah on his way to one of the many matches he’d competed in at the Ben Avery Shooting Range in Phoenix, Arizona when he realized that what he’d long known would someday happen was, in fact, happening.  I’m told that he managed to come to a safe stop out of the flow of traffic, and was found at the wheel of his Audi Quattro at age 49 on January 22, 1997, a little over four months before he’d have turned 50.

 I created a sculpture in his memory in the form of a pair of wings made from a pair of mule deer antlers and incorporating virtually all of the various metals used in shooting sports as well as elk fur, pheasant feathers and other materials related to hunting, and juniper branches from the kind of trees found in the mountains he loved. I named it “Home is the Hunter”, a line from the poem “Requiem” by Robert Louis Stevenson, and presented it to Gretchen.  

Rest in peace, Lance. I miss you, old friend.

Kathleen Bogert Owens (Beekman)

Thank you for such a beautiful tribute to Lance's life!  It was a wonderful history of his life and it was a joy to read it.  You have wonderful memories though.  Thank you for sharing them with all of us.  Take care!  Kathy Owens Beekman