Sliding into bliss
Longtime resident, 82, fulfills ‘bucket list’ item at area water park
An 82-year-old Yuma man’s little “bucket list” request made a big splash last weekend at Waylon’s Water World.
Mel Lawless, a 20-year resident, had been eyeing the slides since the water park section of Z Fun Factory opened down the freeway from his home in the Foothills five years ago, but he could never rationalize buying a one-day pass for a single run.
But earlier this month he and his wife, Carol, were sitting in the pool at the Mountain Cactus Ranch RV and manufactured home park where they live with a couple of friends, including Margaret Hopper.
“We were just sitting, talking as we were going through things, and I said, ‘I would like to go down the slide just one time.’ That’s all I wanted, to go down a slide one time. And after that Margaret took it and she went, boom!” he said.
“Next thing we know it’s Sunday morning and she said, let’s go,” he added.
Hopper said she has no “in” at the water park,
which reopened a few weeks ago under new ownership, so she simply walked in and asked for a manager, ending up leaving a message.
She said she asked them what one trip down the slide would cost. “I told them they couldn’t pay $22 (the senior daily rate) or $28 to go down one time, and that would be all they’d do. They couldn’t justify it,” she said.
She was called back five minutes later by Waylon’s Water World General Manager Brandon Poole, who said he’d do it for free.
“Honestly, I had just watched ‘The Bucket List’ the other night so, yeah, I’ll fulfill any dreams anyone has on a bucket list,” Poole said later.
He said in his experience, octogenarians aren’t a big part of the market for giant water slides. “Yes, very rare, I don’t see elderly people. I don’t see people probably over the age of 50 going down,” he said.
Poole said he ensured the Lawlesses they would have safe travels before they went down the slide.
Mel uses a cane to help him walk due to severe arthritis in his hips, so his wife, Poole and other staff members helped him scale the orange-and-yellow “Constrictor” slide’s ladder.
“What surprised me was the amount of G-force it was creating,” Mel said. “We were up on one side and down, over on the other side, and continuously coming down. The speeds, the G-force, really surprised me. It was an experience. I really enjoyed it.”
Carol, 74, said she and her husband of 56 years “do everything together,” and she needed to help him get into the inner-tube raft, so she went with him on the minute-long voyage.
“I was scared to death,” she admits, but it turned out to be fun, in an amusement-park way. “We thoroughly enjoyed it. We hung on for dear life all the way down, but we started laughing like crazy once we got off,” she said.
Hopper was there to meet them at the bottom of the slide. “I think I was more excited about it than he was,” she said.
Poole was there, too: “He was happy, they were all happy. It was an emotional kind of moment there.”
Afterward, people started jokingly asking Mel whether he’d be jumping out of an airplane for his next trick, but he said, “I’m not going to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.” He nearly had to in Vietnam once, he said, but the plane landed safely.
He served in the military for 31 years, spending two tours in Vietnam and living in Thailand for three years. The couple, originally from Ohio, began coming to Yuma for the winter in 1995 from Petaluma, Calif., where the weather was starting to affect their arthritis, and are now fulltime residents.
Mel said once down a water slide is still enough. “No, I don’t think I would go down it again. Like I said, I wanted to do it one time, and that was it,” he said, but does think he’ll be going back to the restaurant at the park, which he used to frequent.
“I would go down again,” Carol added.
As for the rest of his “bucket list,” Mel said he wants to see the Panama Canal and go on a couple more cruises: “It all depends on how the health stays up.”
Hopper had a blast fulfilling one of her friend’s wishes. “It’s a great thing to be able to make somebody’s dream come true, no matter how minute it is,” she said.