20 years later, breast cancer survivor Lorelle Ellis still backing Rebels

If you're one who remembers obscure scenes from classic movies, you may recall the one in "American Graffiti" in which Toad tries to buy booze at a liquor store.

"Let me have a Three Musketeers … and a ballpoint pen, one of those combs there … a pint of Old Harper … a couple of flashlight batteries and some beef jerky."

This reminded me of a conversation I had with a Henderson woman named Lorelle Ellis a few years ago.

Lorelle is a big UNLV fan — she and her late husband, Mike, used to run a souvenir trailer in front of Sam Boyd Stadium (and the Thomas & Mack Center) when John Robinson was football coach. We had communicated via email for many years.

But we had never met, until Mike Ellis lost his battle with leukemia. Mike had a collection of autographed baseballs; Lorelle knew I was a baseball guy. She thought a baseball guy should have Mike's collection.

When I arrived at her home, the autographed baseballs were in acrylic cases and displayed on the dining room table. Most of the signatures belonged to Hall of Famers, except for one we could not decipher, which turned out to be six-time All-Star Gil McDougald's.

I told her the keepsakes probably were worth a lot of money to somebody. There was no way I could accept them. Then we had a long and pleasant discussion about a lot of things, some even more important than baseball.

Lorelle Ellis mentioned she was a breast cancer survivor.

She mentioned this only in a subtle way, in passing — almost in the way Toad tried to buy booze for rebellious Debbie sitting out front of the liquor store in the '58 Impala. Almost in a for-the-record way, but let's not belabor the point.

To show how priorities sometimes get skewed under deadline constraints, I wrote instead about Lorelle and Mike's autographed baseball collection. In the 12th paragraph, I mentioned she was a breast cancer survivor. But only in passing.

Like it was no big deal, when it was a huge deal. This literally was a life-and-death deal. This was way bigger than Brock for Broglio, or even Babe Ruth to the Yankees for a Broadway show.

Lorelle Ellis was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 55, just months after she and Mike had rekindled a romance that had begun 35 years before. She is Jewish; Mike was not; that's just how it was in those days.

She said she remembers clutching the mammogram ... crying ... telling Mike she was going to die. They had been married only three months.

She did not die. She opted to have a mastectomy. That was heartbreaking, too.

"It was real scary," she said of the procedure, "but the doctors said I could go out to dinner in three days."

So there was no looking back.

There was a lot of going out to dinner.

Lorelle became a Susan G. Komen volunteer and did the Walk for the Cure and did the Run for the Cure. And then she and Mike organized the Shop for the Cure, out front of the Galleria Mall in Henderson.

They went to D.C. for the big Run for the Cure, where there must have been 60,000 walkers and runners. Talk about a severe case of pinkeye. Everybody was wearing pink, as far as you could see, Lorelle said. And then Al Gore made comments about global warming, which didn't seem the right setting for it.

"We're only here for a moment in time," she says of strength and courage and conviction and all the other things that go into conquering this virulent disease — and about living one's life with verve and gusto, instead of complaining about drawing a straw that is much too short.

In Lorelle Ellis' world, there is no time for self-pity or anger when living with gusto is an option.

"When we put our heads on the pillow at night, it's important to feel we did the right thing," she says.

It has been more than 20 years since doctors handed her the short straw. She put her head on the pillow and never stopped living.

She is 77 now. She has played a lot of mahjongg.

And she always writes an email when the Rebels win a big one. She wrote after UNLV beat UNR; she said it reminded her of when John Robinson was coach, because J. Rob always beat those guys.

In February, she's going to Alaska, to see the Iditarod. She says her tour group will get to hang out with mushers one night.

So bring the Three Musketeers and the ballpoint pen and the comb and the flashlight batteries and the beef jerky. And if it's cold outside and it snows, do the right thing and pass Lorelle Ellis the pint of Old Harper before you put your head on the pillow.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski