Faith Facts

• Steve Lackmeyer, an award-winning Oklahoma journalist and man of faith, survived pancreatic cancer after early detection led to a successful Whipple procedure
• The complex seven-hour surgery, performed by transplant surgeons, removed all traces of cancer — a result Lackmeyer calls a miracle
• Despite frustrations with organized religion, Lackmeyer’s faith in God strengthened profoundly through his cancer journey and recovery

OKLAHOMA CITY — It’s a call you never want to receive.

“I’ve got cancer,” your loved one says. Not only that, but it’s pancreatic cancer — often a death sentence.

Immediately, your brain goes into a fog.

The person on the line was Steve Lackmeyer, a happily married father of two and one of my best and oldest friends.

Both journalism majors, we met as students at Oklahoma Christian University in the late 1980s. For four years, we worked late nights together at the student newspaper The Talon, covering everything from tuition hikes to presidential campaign rallies.

My junior year, I worked up the nerve to ask out a smart, gorgeous freshman named Tamie. To my shock and delight, she said yes.

The only problem: My brother, Scott, was headed home to Texas that weekend and taking our shared 1984 Ford LTD station wagon with him.

Enter Lackmeyer: He knew geeks like us didn’t land dates with girls like Tamie often. So he loaned me his blue 1986 Hyundai Excel that Friday night. I mention the car’s color because it — like my future bride’s smile and everything else about that night — remains etched in my memory.

Tamie and I celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary this spring.

Lackmeyer is one of the few people who remember that Tamie and I adopted the pet name “Slush Puppie” for each other. From time to time, he still razzes us about it.

One year at Oklahoma Christian, Lackmeyer roomed with David Duncan, now the preaching minister for the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston.

Even back then, Lackmeyer’s healthy journalistic skepticism impressed Duncan.

“Steve always makes me smile because he never takes anything at face value,” Duncan said.

“He always assumes there may be a story behind the story. Listening to him brainstorm those possible angles was a lot of fun in college because nothing was off the table. He would consider every possibility, no matter how serious or absurd. It was always fun even when dealing with difficult issues.”

The C-word

Since 1990, Lackmeyer has worked as a reporter and editor for The Oklahoman, Oklahoma City’s daily newspaper.

He has won numerous awards for his coverage, from the 1995 federal building bombing to the city’s downtown revitalization to its courting of the NBA. He has written seven books about Oklahoma City history and was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in 2022.

If this wasn’t a serious column, I’d point out that Lackmeyer also has done humorous things like — early in his Oklahoman career — offer to take this writer behind the scenes of the nighttime cops beat and then lock his keys in the company car at a gang shooting scene. Suffice it to say that the late, great city editor Gene Triplett was not happy with my friend that night.

But I digress.

Back to the important stuff: Lackmeyer met his own out-of-his-league bride, Wendy, in 1995 and married her in 1998.

The couple later fostered and adopted two abused boys through the Oklahoma Department of Human Services. Their younger son, whom my friend calls “Squirrel” on social media, is now 21. He has developmental disabilities but is the kindest, politest young man you could ever hope to meet.

While Lackmeyer and I are both extremely busy with life and work, we catch up at least every few months over a meal or a movie or maybe a Thunder game.

But when he left a voicemail for me in late April, I couldn’t help but notice the serious tone in his voice.

I called him back immediately, and that’s when he uttered the C-word.

Expired warranty

Lackmeyer explained that he’d been working hard — nothing new there — and pursuing stories such as an “America at 250” piece on the global retail giant Walmart.

His reporting trip to Walmart’s Bentonville, Ark., headquarters for USA Today — The Oklahoman is a part of its national network — left him feeling extremely tired. He turned 60 at the end of March.

“I guess that’s when your warranty expires,” he joked.

Besides fatigue, symptoms including jaundice and itchiness made it clear he needed to see a doctor.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he had experienced severe nausea and stomach pain but delayed seeking medical attention until almost too late. The surgeon who removed his gallbladder warned him not to make that mistake again.

This time, a bile duct obstruction seemed to be the problem, and an outpatient surgery was scheduled.

“One theory was, ‘Maybe it’s a stray gallstone that stayed behind when the gallbladder was removed,'” Lackmeyer said.

But actually, a mass — a cancerous one — was pressing against his bile duct and pancreas, the surgery found.

A major reason pancreatic cancer is so deadly: It usually doesn’t cause symptoms in the early stages, as the Cleveland Clinic notes. By the time it’s discovered, it’s frequently too late to treat.

“But that’s not what happened here,” my friend told me.

“Because it was pressing against the bile duct, it gave me an early warning.”

More precisely, it gave him a chance — but no guarantee — to survive, he shared in our initial call.

After that, he began undergoing tests to see if he might qualify for a Whipple procedure, also called a pancreaticoduodenectomy. It’s a complex operation that can have serious risks but often saves lives, according to the Mayo Clinic.

In recent years, exercise and medication have helped my friend lose 200 pounds and drastically improve his physical health. Still, the medical team needed to make sure his heart could handle such an operation.

By early June, he got the official word: His surgery was a go.

“I realize that I’m extremely blessed to have this opportunity … to have a good chance of a positive outcome,” he said as we headed to see “Project Hail Mary” about a week before the operation.

“But there are times when I don’t sleep well,” he acknowledged.

“There are times when I’ve got bad dreams. I’m not going to say I’ve not cried or gotten edgy at times, but I’m trying to be very positive. I’m blessed to have a great group of friends.”

One of those friends — Duncan, his old roommate — called and prayed on the phone with Lackmeyer.

The call happened while Lackmeyer was sitting in a Home Depot parking lot. After the amen, he went to smell the flowers inside the home improvement retailer.

While in the Home Depot, he heard Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds (Don’t Worry About A Thing)” playing.

He took it as a sign.

Complicated faith

Cancer has a way of making a man contemplate his own mortality.

My friend is no exception.

When I mentioned — before the surgery — that I might write a column about him and needed to confirm a few details, he quipped, “Oh, this is going to be one really cool obituary.”

“It’s not an obituary,” I replied with a laugh.

“It’s a living legacy.”

Lackmeyer believes in Jesus and has been baptized. He has read the Bible “inside and out,” as he described it to me. But he has a complicated relationship with organized Christianity.

He’s fed up with churches on the right and the left.

“You always end up with culture wars and politics, and that’s not what I’m looking for in a church,” he said.

“I don’t know how my relationship with God is helped with a church that is just hateful or judgmental.”

Still, he has faith in God.

Strong faith.

On the day before the operation, I initiated a three-person call with Lackmeyer and Duncan. Duncan prayed again for our friend and assured him God’s will would be done, no matter the outcome. I might have shed a few silent tears on my end.

The June 10 surgery lasted seven hours. Doctors declared it a success. Still, Lackmeyer would need to spend 26 nights in the hospital. And his journey back to full health would not be over even then.

“Recovery is far more brutal (and) slow than anticipated,” he wrote on Facebook a week and a half after the operation.

‘It is a miracle’

On one of my visits to the hospital, I asked Lackmeyer if his cancer experience had strengthened or weakened his faith.

It’s definitely strengthened it, he replied without hesitation.

“You’ve got a friend who two months ago was facing a potential death sentence with pancreatic cancer,” he said, “and now I’m free of cancer.”

That’s right: His doctor informed him last week that his cancer is gone. The Whipple procedure was a 100 percent success.

“It is a miracle,” Lackmeyer said.

“I mean, God has created these intricate bodies that we have, but at the same time, he has provided men of science, men of medicine, to work miracles, to rewire an engine literally.”

“And that’s what happened with me,” he added.

“I mean, the Whipple is no easy thing. It’s done by transplant surgeons. Those are top of the game. They’re removing things, they’re cutting out pieces of organs, and they’re connecting things to work differently than they did. I mean, that’s amazing.”

Definitely amazing.

Sometimes the call you never want to receive has a happy ending.

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