Jumping for Mikey

Jumping for Mikey

LAKE PLACID – On an uncommonly serene late-January afternoon in the Adirondack Mountains, Jon Lillis gazes out from the deck of the lodge at the Olympic Jumping Complex, and a burst of nostalgia cuts through him like a gust of North Country wind.

One of his 2018 United States Winter Olympic freestyle aerial skiing teammates comes flying down the launch ramp at about 30 mph, hits the two-meter jump, and propels himself perhaps 40 feet in the air. As gravity does its thing and begins to pull him toward the snow-packed ground, he performs a series of highly skilled twists and turns, then nails the landing with both skis in perfect position and finishes the harrowing few seconds with a dramatic spray of powder.

To the casual observer, this looks like an act of sheer lunacy, a surefire way to break every bone in your body. Or worse. To Lillis, a 23-year-old from Rochester who is accurately described by his mother as a “thrill-seeker,” this is all he has ever wanted to do.

“We were right here in Lake Placid, at this facility,” Lillis recalled of the day when, at the age of 8, his future flashed before his eyes. “I saw the way they were jumping, and I was like, ‘Wow, this sport is really cool and beautiful’ and I remember thinking to myself this is something that I could do, and I got on that journey of pursuing that.”

And what a journey it has been, one that began on the bunny hill (though not for long) at Bristol Mountain, and now extends to the other side of the globe in Pyeongchang, South Korea with a worldwide audience watching Lillis’ ascension to the apex of this new-age sport.

Along the way, he has suffered the requisite injuries inherent to freestyle skiing; he has reveled in the thrill of victory including a world championship in March 2017; soldiered through the disappointment of many defeats; survived a horrific non-skiing accident that nearly killed him; and right now, at this moment, the biggest moment of his life, he is coping with an unimaginable family tragedy; the October death of his youngest brother, Mikey, that could have torn him asunder, yet only steeled his will and desire to become a 2018 Olympian.

More:Freestyle skier Michael Lillis, 17, of E. Rochester dies in sleep

“It’s the biggest moment in any athlete’s career, especially an Olympic athlete, to be able to go to the Olympic Games,” said Lillis, who left for South Korea on Tuesday. “It’s a pretty indescribable feeling of not only overwhelming excitement, but also the overwhelming relief in the fact that, finally, it’s all worth it, I’m here, I made it to this stage. And knowing that everyone who has supported you for all these years, they supported you for a reason. That’s a very powerful, moving feeling.”

Lillis strapped on his first pair of skis when he was 5, though it wasn’t long before he realized that merely racing down a mountainside in between slalom poles or over moguls wasn’t going to be enough of a rush for him. Once he saw those aerial skiers soaring through the air in Lake Placid, particularly Canadian great Steve Omischl, it was like a siren song.

“Jon got this (Omischl) shirt, he got it signed, he wouldn’t wash it,” said Jon’s father, Bernie. “For whatever reason … that’s what he wanted to do. He loved the idea of the Olympics and he wanted to be part of it.”

Bernie and his wife, Jamie, always allowed their three sons, Jon, Chris and Mikey, to pursue their passions, but Bernie remembers wishing Jon, the oldest, would pump the brakes a little. Not surprisingly, that did not happen.

“Right before the season started, we got a call from the president of the ski association, one of the parents, and he said, ‘Jon’s a really good skier, but maybe he should try (freestyle),’” Bernie said. “The next weekend we went down to Bristol, and (Jon) had been begging me to be on the freestyle team anyways. These kids were doing these crazy things and I said, ‘Can you wait until you’re a little older?’ But after that conversation, I found Johnny Kroetz and he took him right up and it took off.”

Kroetz, head coach of the Bristol Mountain freestyle team and Jon’s first aerials coach, was more than happy to take Jon, and later Chris and Mikey, under his wing.

“The race coaches had a hell of a time with Jon,” said Kroetz. “He was always off in the woods trying to jump off whatever he could. He didn’t listen very well, so he fit in well with our group. We were goofy …

“… and we liked to jump off whatever we could find.”

Jon loves poker and if there is one thing he’d rather be than an aerial skier, it’s a professional card player. Which is odd because poker is a cunning game that requires a level of patience, something Jon has never had much of on the mountain.

“Let’s say he learned a 360 helicopter, and he’d work on that and once he did it, he wanted to do a 720,” said Kroetz. “That’s kind of him, always pushing the envelope, always wanting to be the first to do something, and doing the toughest trick he could. He’s one of the most tenacious kids I’ve met. I’m not terribly surprised he made it to the Olympics.”

At Bristol Mountain, Jon didn’t have the same amenities as kids who grow up and train at the elite ski facilities in places such as Utah, Colorado and Vermont. What he had, though, was the energetic Kroetz extracting every ounce of talent and ambition his skiers had, enabling them to be the best they could be, all the while making it fun.

“What was special about Bristol was the off-the-mountain stuff,” said Jon. “It wasn’t the mountain, it wasn’t the jumps, it wasn’t the moguls course. It was the people that made Bristol special, and how they ingrained the love of skiing in us. I give Johnny Kroetz a ton of credit. You really, really had to love it to come to Bristol, and I think everyone did.”

Which is why, Jon said, there are currently six members of the U.S. freestyle ski team who once called Bristol Mountain home: Jon and Morgan Schild, who both made the Olympics, plus Chris Lillis, Dylan Walczyk, Patrick O’Flynn and Harrison Smith.

There is skiing and poker, plus a third passion that Jon has: sports fan, specifically of the New York Yankees and Buffalo Bills.

On the afternoon of Sept. 9, 2007, Jon was sitting at home watching the Bills play their season opener against the Denver Broncos. On the kickoff to begin the second half, Buffalo’s Kevin Everett made a tackle and smashed awkwardly into the return man’s chest.

Everett crumpled, his spine damaged and his body limp before he hit the turf face first. Doctors worked feverishly on Everett for about 15 minutes before he was transported off the field in an ambulance.

It came to light a day later that the Bills’ orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Andrew Cappuccino, had used a revolutionary procedure that ultimately allowed Everett to avoid paralysis. Right there on the field, Cappuccino placed Everett in a hypothermic state by running ice-cold saline through his system, theorizing that it would stem the rapidity of the swelling around Everett’s spine. Two days later, Everett voluntarily moved his arms and legs, and three months hence, he was able to walk.

Having heard about this, doctors at Golisano Children’s Hospital met and discussed the treatment and how they would implement it if a case like this presented itself. Four days after Everett was injured, there was a case.

Bernie had just left the house to go to a doctor’s appointment, and Jamie was on her way home from her job as a first-grade teacher at School 19 in the city. Jon, 13 at the time, was horsing around with 9-year-old Chris and 7-year-old Mikey, and he slipped on a wooden staircase. As he tumbled down, the hemp necklace he was wearing got caught on the banister and in effect, he hung himself and lost consciousness.

“I was just there, and Chris called and said, ‘Jon won’t wake up’ and I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ ” Bernie recalled. “I couldn’t process it. So, I said, ‘go get the neighbor’ (who was an emergency room doctor).”

Said Jamie: “I was on 490 at the time, and I raced as fast as I could and I beat the ambulance there.”

The situation was so dire that the hospital decided to have doctors and special equipment transported to the ambulance while it was en route, rather than wait until it arrived. When Jon was wheeled in, he was put into a medically induced coma and the doctors implemented a similar hypothermic treatment used on Everett in the hope that it would prevent swelling of his brain, which it did.

In a 2010 Democrat and Chronicle story, Dr. Karen Powers, a pediatric critical care specialist at Golisano who was part of the team that treated Jon, said, “The one organ that does not have regenerating powers is the brain. If a reasonable amount of time passes where the brain has not been given adequate oxygen or blood flow, kids are at a high risk of a poor neurological outcome, including death.”

Four days later, Jon was brought out of the coma, and incredibly, it was like he’d just taken a four-day nap.

“They have a social worker come talk to you, and they say he’s never going to be the same, and you start preparing for that,” said Bernie. “But he woke up and he was fine. It was bizarre, they couldn’t understand it. He was walking within a couple hours. This happened in September, by December he was a normal kid, and he wanted to ski.”

Jon’s most vivid memory of the incident occurred a month later, when his doctor told him he’d never be able to ski again. Yeah, right.

“I was sitting there with my mom, my brother, and my doctor, and the doctor was like, ‘OK, you made it through this, you’re getting stronger and your health is coming back, but you’ll never be able to do athletics again and you’ll definitely never be able to compete in freestyle skiing,’ ” Jon said. “I remember definitely in my head being like, ‘I’m going to find another doctor,’ but also like an ‘I’ll show you’ type of mentality. I definitely can come back from this.”

In truth, he already was. A week before that checkup, with his parents both at work, Jon was home alone doing his school work — he still hadn’t returned to class — and he went out in the backyard and was jumping on the trampoline, practicing his flips.

“Little did (the doctor) know for the past week I’d already been doing it,” Jon said. “I didn’t really listen; I didn’t take that to heart at all. I remember I was back on snow competing about a month and a half after that doctor said that. I felt fortunate that I got better and overcame that, and it was another chance given to me, a re-motivating factor for me to try as hard as I could.”

Dr. Powers said, “For us, a great outcome is a kid walking and talking and being able to live independently. Maybe he has a bit of trouble with math, or he’s a little clumsy. That’s still an awesome outcome. For him to be able to become an elite athlete? That’s an incredible story.”

Just a couple years before Jon’s accident, Russian coach Dmitry Kavunov had started the Elite Aerial Development Program at Lake Placid to train individuals who were on track to compete in world cup events and the Olympics. Not long after he’d returned to jumping, Jon was watching a championship event on television, and an advertisement came across the screen that implored anyone interested in trying out for the elite program to send a video to Kavunov.

Jon put together a highlight reel, sent it off, Kavunov invited him up for a month and liked what he saw, so he asked him to stay another month. At that point, with Kavunov convinced he had Olympic potential, Jon became a full-time member of the program. He moved to Lake Placid to train and compete, and in 2011 he was named to the U.S. national team and was sent out to the national training center in Park City, Utah.

Meanwhile, back home at Bristol, Chris and Mikey, who had followed their brother into the sport, were working their way along the same snowy path, and Bernie and Jamie knew there were financial sacrifices they needed to make, which they did so, happily.

“It’s just re-allocating how we spent our money,” Jamie said. “You’re allowing your children to follow their passion, follow their dream, and you’re fostering it. We’ve never regretted our decision to let them go do that.”

Bernie, who has joked with Jon that he could have had a couple sports cars if not for all the skiing expenses, sold the family home in Pittsford and they moved into a smaller townhouse in East Rochester.

March 2017:U.S. aerialist skier Jonathon Lillis wins World Cup title

More: Jon Lillis’ International Ski Federation stats and results

“It doesn’t matter,” Bernie said. “At the end of the day, with Jon saying since he was a little kid that he wanted to go to the Olympics, and doing this program starting when he was 14, I didn’t want him to be 30 years old and think what could it have been. No more vacations to Disney World; now our vacations are on the side of a mountain which is just as fun as long as we’re together.”

Jon knows what his parents have done to help him and his brothers chase their shared dream, and without their support, he said, “I wouldn’t be able to do it. They had to give up hundreds of thousands of dollars throughout my career. Training and doing this is not cheap. We’ve had fundraisers, everything, so it’s not just my parents, it’s a whole community of people behind you, and I think that without any one of those people in that community that I feel has been a supporting factor for me, I feel like I’d be in a different place right now. It was their passion, too, to watch their kids ski. They love coming out to the competitions and watching us compete.”

One by one, Jon, Chris and Mikey earned invitations to Lake Placid to be part of the Elite program, they all traveled around the country and the world to compete in events, and all were destined to become Olympians.

Jon made it, Chris would have made it this year had he not blown out his knee during a competition in Switzerland shortly before Christmas. And Mikey? No doubt, his time was going to come because, as Jon said back in May 2017, “I think he could be better than both of us, not too long from now.”

Mikey, however, never got the chance.

It was Friday, Oct. 20, Game 6 of the American League Championship Series, and all the Lillis brothers were set up in various locales to watch their beloved Yankees who were one victory away from beating the Houston Astros and advancing to the World Series.

Mikey was back home in Rochester during a brief two-week break from training in Lake Placid, and knowing that his grandmother was going to The Distillery to eat and watch the game, Mikey told Bernie he’d like to go there, too.

“How many kids on a Friday night want to go be with their grandmother?” Bernie said. “He was the best kid. We had chicken wings, watched the game, everything was normal, and we came back home.”

And then, nothing was normal.

“I said, ‘OK, see you in the morning’ and he walked upstairs to go to bed,” Bernie said with Jamie sitting at his side, wiping tears from her face as she listens to him recount what happened next. “In the morning, I had a dentist appointment so I left early. Jamie went up at 10 o’clock to wake him up, and he was gone.”

Bernie remembers coming home and having no idea what was happening. Jon and Chris were over in Switzerland training and competing, and Bernie was on the phone with Jon when he pulled up to the townhouse to find a chaotic scene.

“Jamie’s in the front yard screaming, and it doesn’t make any sense,” Bernie said with unwavering composure. “I start running and the sheriff stops me and he said, ‘Your son’s not with us anymore.’ And I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ I went upstairs and he was still lying in the same position he was sleeping in, hand under his head.”

Dead. In his sleep. Seventeen years old, an elite athlete who was as healthy as could be. More than three months later, autopsy results have not determined what took Mikey from this world, and it could be several months more before they do.

More:Breaking hearts remember U.S. freestyle skier Mikey Lillis

Bernie called Jon to break the devastating news, and Jon in turn told Chris. Jon remembers flipping out in the apartment he was staying in, punching a wall and throwing some chairs around, unable to harness his anger. Now, he has turned that anger into motivation to honor his brother.

“If (Mikey) wasn’t involved in the sport, it would be a lot harder for me to use it as a motivational tool,” said Jon. “When I got back to jumping, this is what we did together, this is the dream that we shared, this is what you wanted me to do. Now, going to the Games and being on the Olympic team, I know that would have been something that would have made him very happy. Doing this sport is something that makes it easy to be a motivational tool and a little bit of wind in the sail and a fire in the furnace type of deal.”

Not a day goes by where Jon doesn’t think of Mikey. Every tweet or Instagram post he makes comes with the #jumpingformikey hashtag; he has written Mikey’s name on his ski gloves and holds them up whenever he is being interviewed; he has a Mikey sticker on his helmet; and whenever he can, he sports Team Lillis apparel.

Skiing was their communal passion, so every moment he’s on the mountain, or in the gym working out, Jon feels as if Mikey is with him, pushing him to be the best he can be.

And now, quite literally, Mikey is indeed with him, always, thanks to the kindness of a Rochester glass artist named Craig Iamon.

A couple weeks ago, Iamon saw a television news story about the Lillis family, and learned that Jon had hoped to carry Mikey’s ashes with him as he walked in the Opening Ceremonies in Pyeongchang. Originally, Jon wanted to carry a box with him, but that was not going to be allowed for security reasons.

Iamon made contact with Jamie and offered to make glass trinkets for Jon and the entire family, in which portions of Mikey’s ashes could be encased.

“I’ve been working with glass about 15 years and incorporating ashes into glass for the last 12,” said Iamon. “It struck me when I heard the story, and I had this immediate feeling that I needed to reach out and do this for them. It was just something that hit me in the heart and I had the gut feeling that I needed to do that for them. Just meeting Jamie, it was such a powerful experience for both of us.”

Within four days of seeing the story, Iamon created beads for everyone in the family, plus pendants for Jon, Jamie, and Bernie, and a cross for Chris. Jon will wear his gifts in the Opening Ceremonies on Friday and all around the Olympic Village, but he won’t risk breaking or losing them during practice or competition.

“He has mentioned to me numerous times that Michael is with him, he feels his spirit with him, every jump that he’s taking,” said Jamie. “When he has a bad jump and doesn’t feel like taking any more, he’s heard Michael’s words of encouragement to get up and do it again. For Jon, it has become a driving force behind him, and he wants to do it to honor Michael.”

The men’s freestyle aerial qualifier will be held Saturday, Feb. 17 with a Rochester start time of 6 a.m. The finals are Feb. 18, also beginning at 6 a.m.
Bernie and Jamie leave for Seoul on Tuesday, will arrive on Wednesday, will head to Pyeongchang on Thursday, and stay through Feb. 19.

They have broken hearts, of course, but those hearts will also be bursting with pride and joy as Jon lives the dream he has had ever since that day long ago at Lake Placid. “To be able to stay focused on that for 15 years after that point is amazing,” Bernie said of his son. “Everything he does in life is to do that.”

What a journey it has been, but the journey, Jon said, does not end in South Korea. After practice that day in Lake Placid a couple weeks back, the place where his dream began to take shape, he said of making the Olympics, “The only thing that would sound cooler to me would be ‘Jon Lillis, two-time Olympian.’ So, maybe I’ll have that interview in four years.”

Cooler still, a gold medal around his neck to share with Team Lillis.

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More: 7 reasons Chris and Jon Lillis are #BrotherGoals

More: U.S. Ski & Snowboard mourns passing of Mikey Lillis

Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for the Democrat and Chronicle since 1990 and is now the longest-tenured day-to-day beat reporter in the team’s history, as well as for the D&C. In addition to his work for the D&C, Sal is a regular guest on local radio sports talk shows in Rochester on 1180-AM and 1280-AM. Sal is an avid, single-digit handicap golfer, and has authored 20 books including several chronicling the history of the Bills. He was a 2009 inductee into the media section of the Frontier Field Walk of Fame, one of Rochester’s highest media honors, and is a two-time winner of the Rochester Press-Radio Club Sports Writer of the Year award, 1993 and 2005.