Rewind Patrick Swayze
As it nears the 10-year anniversary of his sad passing, friends of the star reveal the secret regrets the acting legend hid from the world
Nobody puts baby in a corner.” With those words, from the 1987 hit film Dirty Dancing, Patrick Swayze cemented his place in moviegoers’ hearts forever.
Yet ironically, “he had a hard time with the phrase,” reveals the star’s long-time bodyguard and friend Frank Whiteley.
It’s one of many memories Frank and other friends of Patrick, who lost his battle with pancreatic cancer at 57, are sharing about him as it approaches 10 years since his death.
While we remember him as a carefree and fearless soul, his trusted inner fold says that brave exterior hid insecurities, a desperate longing to be a father and desire to give everything to his work, even as he neared the end of his life.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about him,” says Frank, who affectionately called the actor “Buddy” and was a frequent recipient of late night calls in which the duo spoke about everything from politics to religion, to matters of the heart.
The second of five siblings born to his dancer mum Patsy and rodeo champion dad Jesse, Patrick was
“probably the greatest natural athlete I ever saw,” says Stacy Widelitz, who co-wrote the song She’s Like The Wind with him. “Anything physical he wanted to do, he just excelled at.”
“Buddy wanted to be a cowboy because his dad was a cowboy,” reveals Frank, who says Patrick idolised his father. But he also loved dancing, often in his mother’s studio training.
“His mum was a strict ruler, his dad was more lenient,” Frank recalls of the Swayze household.
LOVE OF HIS LIFE
Outside of dance was a far greater passion in Patrick’s life – his wife Lisa Niemi. The pair met when 14-year-old Lisa was his mother’s student. Patrick was four years older and about to leave for New York City but, he once said, “I couldn’t stop thinking about Lisa.”
The pair married five years later in 1977.
“Buddy loved that woman more than life itself,” says Frank. “They fought like married people do, but he loved her with his dying breath.”
Stacy agrees that the relationship was “fiery at times”, but Patrick credited Lisa with keeping his feet on the ground when his acting career took off in 1985 with the TV series North And South.
“He wanted to be a dad more than anything,” Frank reveals. The couple had tried to have a child but, tragically, Lisa had miscarried in 1990. “It broke his heart.”
Although he was a star on the rise, the pressure Patrick felt had dark consequences. Always a chain smoker, he began drinking heavily after his father died of a heart attack in 1982. Then, in 1994, his older sister Vicky, who
suffered from depression, committed suicide. Patrick said the event “changed my life” and led him to enter rehab. But, Frank shares, almost 10 years later he fell off the wagon.
“The alcohol came more from not having a child,” says Frank, who remembers an argument with Lisa while finishing their 2003 film One Last Dance led to a memorable bender.
Luckily, Patrick’s older brother Donny intervened, and according to Frank, the pair would “mountain bike 20, 30, 40 miles a day until the urge to drink went away”.
Lisa and Patrick healed their rift. When his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer came in 2008, the couple had been married for 33 years.
Patrick worked until the end and faced with his own mortality admitted he, “was scared”, but had “done a lot of living”.
He passed away with Lisa by his side on September 14, 2009.
“About a year before [his death] he renewed his vows and had a small party at his house,” says Frank of Patrick’s final days. “He knew the end was coming but he didn’t act like it... I think he was at peace with it.”
‘He wanted to be a dad more than anything. It broke his heart’