Columnist Ron Kantowski: Las Vegas torchbearer fired up

Thursday, Jan. 31, 2002 | 10:24 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's insider notes column appears Tuesday and his Page One column appears Thursday. He can be reached at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

After dealing with Mike Tyson for the past 10 days, I think we all could use a feel-good story to cleanse our collective palate.

And Mark Stewart is it.

Stewart is one of 17 Las Vegans who will carry the Olympic Torch through Southern Utah on Monday. That's as close to Las Vegas as the flame will flicker, perhaps because organizers weren't sure how long Tyson would be hanging around following his licensing hearing, and they wanted to guarantee its safe arrival in Salt Lake City next Friday.

A slot foreman at the Monte Carlo hotel-casino, Stewart was nominated for the honor by his father, Donald. But that's only part of the reason Stewart feels so close to his dad.

While many of us credit our fathers for our well-being, Stewart is one of the few who mean it literally. From 1994 until last April, a donor kidney from his dad was the primary thing that kept Stewart alive.

His body eventually rejected his father's kidney, forcing Stewart to undergo another delicate transplant last spring. He's doing fine now, and proudly looking forward to carrying the torch at Zion National Park with his father, live-in girlfriend Jennifer, and enough family members and friends to form a modern biathlon team looking on.

"My father had mentioned to me last spring that he had written an essay (nominating Mark as a torchbearer) through Chevrolet (which sponsors the Torch Relay)," Stewart said. "I was just happy he did it. We said it would be something great if they called at the end of October (when the torchbearer roster was announced).

"Then I got a letter that said I was one of the torchbearers. It doesn't get any better than that."

Stewart said -- if you'll pardon the pun -- that he'll be carrying a torch for his country as well as his family and friends when he's handed the flame. The red-orange rock formations of Zion will serve as a scenic backdrop for his personal Olympic moment, a .2-of-a-mile jog along the Torch's journey through 46 states.

The events of Sept. 11 made Stewart count his lucky stars one more time.

"I'm just overwhelmed," he added. "I'm so excited, proud, everything. There's the patriotic sense of it, the pride of being an American, and my own self-preservation. It's going to be real emotional. I've just got to pace myself so I don't run the whole way, because I want it to last as long as I can and enjoy it."

Stewart said he wasn't a "big gym guy," even before his kidney disease surfaced. But he described himself as an active person who liked to cycle and roller-blade before his health problems.

He was slowed to a crawl -- or worse -- prior to the transplants, when he was forced to endure three dialysis treatments per week.

With all due respect to the ski-jumper who topples off the 90-meter hill on that famous Wide World of Sports intro, the Agony of Defeat does not come close to approaching the agony that kidney disease patients must endure, simply to continue breathing.

"Before I had health problems, I never realized how difficult it was for people to deal with those types of illnesses," Stewart said. "Before you experience something like that, you have no idea of what the small things in life should mean to you."

The rest of us, Mark, should just feel blessed that we'll have to take your word for it.

Flame On, guy.