Community mourns promising athlete

Eric Leake and Mary Manning

Tuesday, June 21, 2005 | 11:07 a.m.

Johnny Stack was to have been the starting pitcher Monday night for Las Vegas High School's summer league baseball game at Durango High School, throwing the fastballs he was known for.

"This would have been his game. They would have never hit him," his coach Izzy DiMaria said.

Instead, Stack's team lost by 10 runs.

Stack's jersey had hung beside beside his team's dugout Monday night, and each of his teammates had touched the jersey in remembrance as they went to bat.

Their lanky 17-year-old friend had drowned while swimming at Lake Mead on Sunday.

"As athletic as Johnny was, water and nature combined is such a force," said Stack's former Little League coach, Rick Johnson, as he shook his head.

"Johnny was a leader, everybody wanted to swing like him, to carry a bat like him, to wear their caps like him," Johnson said, recalling Stack's Little League all-star status.

"He wrote his own script. ... He was a natural."

DiMaria, likewise, described Stack as a coach's dream.

"He was the fastest kid on the team. He was unbelievable, a gentleman, respectful, respectful to me," DiMaria said. "He was a prince of a kid. He would have gone somewhere. He had talent."

The coach's husky voice faltered as he told of addressing Stack's teammates before the game and holding a moment of silence in his memory.

"We were all crying," DiMaria said as he choked up. "We told them that he's with us and we're going to dedicate the season to him, go to bat, and he's with us."

Stack's jersey will be with the team in the dugout throughout the rest of the season, DiMaria vowed.

Jim Ricci, assistant baseball coach at Desert Pines High School, where Stack spent his freshman and sophomore years, said the teen was "a guaranteed first pick in the major leagues."

"He had the heater," Ricci said.

Other players were afraid of him when he got up to bat, Johnson's wife, Teresa, said. "He's one of the kids you thought was going to the pros," she said.

Seventeen-year-old Desert Pines senior Jasmine Cooper said Stack was popular for more than his athleticism, however. "He was funny, real goofy, but he was also real smart. He got straight A's."

"After all that has happened, it's very hard for me to speak," Stack's father, Fred, said Monday night, his voice barely audible.

Family friend Edward Mendiole said Stack's mother, Merly, said over the weekend that Johnny had told her he had almost drowned last month while at Lake Mead with friends.

In addition to playing sports, Johnny loved swimming with his buddies at the lake, friends and family said.

"Kids are kids, you know?" Mendiole said. "Here he is in the prime of life, he's just barely starting. It's tragic."

About 5:45 p.m. Sunday, Johnny and two other teenage boys were racing in the lake between the Goverment Wash shoreline and an island about 300 feet away. Johnny lagged behind the other two boys, Mendiole said.

"He started asking for help," Mendiole said, but his friends did not hear him until they had reached the shore.

When his two companions tried to swim back to rescue Johnny, the winds pushed them back. He slipped out of sight beneath the waves.

"Nobody could help him," his mother lamented Monday night.

A call for help came at 6:23 p.m., a National Park Service statement said. Park Service divers found Stack's body before 8 p.m.

At the Stack home Monday, friends and fellow players gathered in a prayer circle with his parents and three siblings inside the house and in grieving groups outside, all sharing stories and remembering him.

The dark-haired, dark-eyed teen went to Desert Pines High before attending Las Vegas High last year for his junior year. He played baseball, football and basketball and had attended football camp at UNLV last week.

Through his shining dark eyes, he had seen a world in which everything was possible, his parents recalled. He figured he could play two professional sports, a la Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson.

"He wanted to be a baseball and a football player," his mother said through tears.

Viewing is scheduled from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday and again from noon to 7 p.m. on Friday at Palm Mortuary at 7600 S. Eastern Ave.

Funeral services have been scheduled at the Palm Mortuary chapel at noon Saturday with viewing from 10 a.m. to noon. Stack will be buried at Palm Mortuary after services.

A fund has been set up to help the Stack family with funeral expenses at U.S. Bank. Contributions may be made to the Johnny Stack Memorial Fund, Account No. 153751911873.