The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gospel singer inspired listeners amid setbacks
Lashun Pace earned acclaim as a soloist and with her eight sisters.
A deep devotion to God and a thunderous voice that drove listeners to their feet propelled Tarrian Lashun Pace to gospel superstardom. A series of health problems cut her remarkable life short.
Pace, a founding member of the Anointed Pace Sisters gospel group, died March 21 of kidney failure after five years of dialysis and a lifetime struggle with weight and the diabetes that accompanied it. She was 60.
A service celebrating the singer’s life is scheduled for 11 a.m. today at Word of Faith Family Worship Cathedral, 212 Riverside Parkway in Austell.
The Grammy-nominated singer led a life beset with trauma but blessed with success. Those close to her say Pace coped with the former with as much grace as the humility with which she handled the latter.
Pace survived a divorce, the death of a young daughter, an esophagus rupture that nearly killed her, and other health problems including cancer. She hit the Billboard Gospel chart multiple times, both as a solo performer and with her eight Pace sisters: Duranice, Phyllis, June, Melonda, Dejuaii, Leslie, Latrice and Lydia. Duranice died in 2021.
“I Know I’ve Been Changed,” a song from Pace’s 1990 debut album, “He Lives,” is widely regarded as a gospel classic. Filmmaker Tyler Perry wrote a musical by the same name, casting Pace in it and including her song.
The two remained friends over decades. In 2018, Perry bought a house for Pace’s ailing mother.
Despite Pace’s achievements, she never thought of herself as a star. She preferred the title of evangelist.
“She showed us how it was possible to love God, his people, and keep the mission at the forefront without being tainted by
the industry,” Latrice Pace said. “Record labels never understood her. They were always looking to the selling aspect. They thought she was crazy when she went in and said, ‘God told me what I should call this album. He told me I should use this photo.’ It caused her to lose some deals, but she was doing the will of the Lord.”
Pace never seemed to question her faith, even in the darkest of times. In 2001, Pace’s 11-year-old daughter, Xenia, died unexpectedly of an enlarged heart. The death sent Pace into a downward spiral. She moved temporarily into the home of her sister June. There, Pace recalled in a 2014 interview, she listened to gospel music “24/7” to help cope with her loss.
“While I was laying there, believe it or not … God said, ‘Do you trust me?’” Pace told the streaming “When We Speak TV.” “And I was weeping. I said, ‘Yes, Lord.’ He said, ‘If you trust me in this … accept it.’”
Then her own song, “Just Because God Said It,” started playing.
“I was through,” Pace said. As a pastor’s daughter raised in a strict religious home in Poole Creek, Pace and her sisters were forbidden to see movies, have boyfriends or wear pants, among other restrictions.
“We even muted the TV commercials because of the secular music,” Latrice Pace said.
It was in that system that a family-wide problem with food and
weight evolved. The sisters, minus Lashun, appeared on “Iyanla: Fix My Life” on the Oprah Winfrey Network in 2013 to talk about their weight problems.
In a May 2021 interview with another gospel singer, Audrey Dubois Harris, Pace lamented the difficulties of trying to get control of her weight and health. She described her congestive heart failure and having to be confined temporarily to a wheelchair. “Take care of your bodies,” Pace implored her listeners. “It is the temple of God.”
In her final months, Pace recorded and posted videos in which she preached, sang and held virtual communion with viewers.
While Pace’s death was a shock, Latrice Pace wondered if her sister
knew her end was coming.
“Everyone gets the gravity of her loss, the devastation of it,” Latrice Pace said. “She was the trailblazer for this entire family. The only reason we are able to do what we do today is because of her. I don’t think people understand what the trailblazers have gone through to make it different for those who come behind them.”
Lashun Pace didn’t seem to think she was that big of a deal. In the “When We Speak TV” interview, she said: “I’ve never seen myself as a diva. I just wanted to sing. Man, I love singing.”
Along with her sisters, Pace is survived by a daughter, Aarion Rhodes, who is following in her mother’s musical footsteps.
It was the morning of Jan. 17, a Monday. The Associated Press Top 25 poll that would come out that day would include one team from the ACC: Duke at No. 6. Remarkably, the conference synonymous with basketball glory had only two additional teams among the 39 receiving votes — Miami and North Carolina.
It was time for Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner to hop on his soapbox.
“I think North Carolina’s really good,” he said of a team that had been blown out by Tennessee and Kentucky in nonconference play. “I think they’re good
enough to go to the Final Four. They’re a top-10 team. I don’t know why they’re not ranked. I don’t get it.”
He went on.
“Duke’s good enough to win the national championship,” he said. “People want to talk about the ACC being down or something. I think that’s crazy. The ACC is really good.”
A couple more:
“Duke and Carolina can win the national championship. They’re good enough to win the whole entire thing. They both might be in the Final Four.”
“Miami, how about when
they’re in the tournament, how hard of an out they’ll be?”
“In the end, you’ll see multiple teams competing for Sweet 16s, Elite Eights, Final Fours, and I think we have a good chance of someone coming out of here as a national title (winner) from the ACC.”
Move ahead 10 weeks, and Pastner appears positively prescient. Dismissed the entire season as being in a down year, the ACC has Duke and North Carolina in the Final Four, the Tar Heels as a No. 8 seed that stunned No. 1-seed Baylor in the second round. Miami reached the Elite Eight as a No. 10 seed.
Notre Dame won as a No. 11 seed in the first round over No. 6-seed Alabama. Only Virginia Tech failed to get out of the first round. The conference is 13-3, and the worst the league can finish is 14-5. The Big 12 is 11-5, with Kansas remaining. The schools from the remaining three power conferences have all been eliminated. The SEC, whose six teams were all No. 6 seeds or higher,
bombed out at 5-6.
Pastner’s own team didn’t make it past the first round of the ACC Tournament, but his trumpeting of the conference apparently had credence. Since his hire before the 2016-17 season, Pastner has touted the ACC as the best conference inthe country. This year, when the conference was widely derided and arguably snubbed by the tournament selection committee, the results of the past two weekends have supported his contention.
“Look, I’m not good at changing a light bulb, but I know when good teams are there,” he told The Atlanta Journal-constitution. “I just know when teams are good. I have a good feel on that.”
Pastner’s prediction batting average isn’t perfect. Earlier in the season, he vowed that “Georgia’s going to be really good in the SEC” and that “Georgia Southern’s going to win a lot of games in conference.” Georgia was historically bad and fired coach Tom Crean, while the Eagles finished 5-11 in the Sun Belt Conference.
But to Pastner, it is stone-cold confirmation.
“Ithink what it means for Georgia Tech is we’re in the best bas
ketball league in the country,” he said. “A year ago, to win the ACC is a heck of a deal, and the year before that, we were pretty darned good.”
Pastner had an out-of-the-box solution for getting more teams in the tournament in the future: a 28-game league schedule. Since it was poor nonconference play that established the conference’s reputation this season, Pastner theorized that the conference should limit nonconference games and play a full round robin with every team in the league.
“Our league is a league that gets better as the year goes on, because a lot of guys leave early for the draft, and it starts out as a younger league — you’re getting portal kids — so it might take a little more time for everyone to get in sync with each other,” Pastner said.
Hence, rather than play nonconference games when league teams are, in his view, more vulnerable, avoid those games almost entirely. Pastner acknowledged his solution is “a little extreme” and that it hadn’t gotten much traction.
“But something’s got to be done,” he said.