{"id":612,"date":"2021-11-18T22:29:16","date_gmt":"2021-11-18T22:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newboppersite.048566e.netsolhost.com\/?page_id=612"},"modified":"2021-11-23T18:48:06","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T18:48:06","slug":"tragedy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bopper.com\/?page_id=612","title":{"rendered":"Tragedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life and music are going smoothly…. and then Tragedy strikes!<\/h2>\n

Life is going along smoothly. \u00a0The band is rockin! \u00a0Home life is good. \u00a0 Then the early morning phone call from my sister-in-law. \u00a0January 14, 2010 my elder brother dies suddenly of a heart attack. \u00a0He was my only sibling. \u00a0Frank loved music.\u00a0While\u00a0my brother didn’t play an instrument. \u00a0With sufficient amounts of beer, he did a\u00a0pretty good Elvis. \u00a0RIP Frank.<\/p>\n

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Frank and I circa 1959<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Frank H.S. Yearbook<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Frank Oliver (Oct 14, 1947 – Jan 14, 2010)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More Than One …\u00a0<\/h4>\n

September 3, 2013<\/strong>: another tragedy struck. Randy \u201cWolfman\u201d Lobeck suffered a fatal stroke. This was an extremely tough time for the band. They had lost a friend and a \u201cbrother\u201d who had performed with them for over twelve years. This time it wasn\u2019t just that someone retired or separated and could show up from time to time; this time it was permanent. Randy was a unique personality, a gifted musician with a generous spirit. Although receiving countless offers and inquiries from local sax players to replace or fill-in for Randy, the Cadillacs decided he was irreplaceable. They would return to the original \u201clean and mean\u201d five-piece instrumentation.<\/p>\n

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Randy \u201cWolfman\u201d Lobeck (5\/29\/1947 \u2013 9\/3\/2013)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Must do better… or become a tragedy myself<\/h4>\n

At the\u00a0time of Randy’s passing, I was grossly over-weight (obese), with very high blood pressure. \u00a0My father died of a stroke. \u00a0My bother a heart attack at 62, and now one of my closest friends of a stroke (high blood pressure). \u00a0Melanie, my son, Allen, my sister-in-law Kathy, and my niece and nephews all ganged up on me. \u00a0I was now the eldest living member of my family. \u00a0They insisted I get checked out: \u00a0stress test, blood work, “the works”. \u00a0So, I complied. \u00a0When\u00a0it was all done, the cardiologist told me that everything was good except being 100 lb. overweight; nothing wrong with me that getting into shape\u00a0wouldn’t\u00a0fix. \u00a0I decided to take the advice. \u00a0I stopped by a local personal\/group training gym, Club Performax. \u00a0I discussed the situation with the owner, Rod\u00a0Stewart (what a coincidence that was?). One small problem: the membership was very expensive. \u00a0I stated as much. \u00a0He replied: \u00a0“Well, what’s your health worth?” \u00a0So, with a lot of encouragement from my family and especially bandmate, Mike Parker, I got to work to get into shape. \u00a0A very special thank you to my personal trainer, Chris Streiff. \u00a0Thanks to he and Rod, I went from not\u00a0being able to row 200m on a machine to completing the 10K, 25 obstacle Savage Race.<\/p>\n

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315 lb. to 208 lb<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Savage Race 2014 (age 62): 3rd Place Bronze Medal for age 60-65<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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2016 Savage Race: Mike Parker (age 66) joins me to finish again at age 64.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

**Note: \u00a0Mike (Keyboards) and I not only ran the Savage in the morning, but went on to perform at Spanish Springs from 5-9 pm. Could have been just a bit crazy \ud83d\ude42<\/i><\/p>\n

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Life and music are going smoothly…. and then Tragedy strikes! Life is going along smoothly. \u00a0The band is rockin! \u00a0Home<\/p>\n

Continue readingTragedy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-612","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bopper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bopper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bopper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bopper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bopper.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/bopper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":767,"href":"https:\/\/bopper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/612\/revisions\/767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bopper.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}