From PEOPLE Magazine
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It was a strength he drew upon in the 20 months following his shattering diagnosis, battling the disease like "a warrior," as his brother Don put it last year, until he finally succumbed at age 57 on Sept. 14 at home at his California ranch with Don and Lisa at his side. A classically trained ballet dancer who became a blockbuster leading man, "Patrick was a rare and beautiful combination of raw masculinity and amazing grace," says his Dirty Dancing costar Jennifer Grey. A high school football player who could pull off gravity-defying grand jetés, a big-screen heartthrob who drove his own cattle, Swayze brought all of his diverse talents to the films that became touchstones for generations of moviegoers, including 1987's Dirty Dancing and 1990's Ghost. "Patrick was a real Renaissance man," says his friend Rob Lowe, who costarred with him in 1983's The Outsiders. "He lived 100 lifetimes in one." Adds his Dirty Dancing choreographer Kenny Ortega: "He had such an enthusiasm for everything he did. If he could climb it, he climbed it. If he could write it, he wrote it. If he could dance it ... well, we all knew he did. He lived."
By his side for every step was his childhood sweetheart. As fans around the world mourn the loss of a favorite star, his grieving friends and family are doing their best to cope—and to be there for a devastated Lisa, 53. "She's a tough woman, but she's lost her best friend," says Rotko. "I'm sure she'll cope with it with class and dignity, the way she copes with everything, but they were best friends. It was a very profound, powerful bond. It wasn't jaded. It was real."
Their love only strengthened in the face of such grim adversity. Even as Swayze began to lose his battle, friends say he and Lisa never abandoned their spirit of hope, with Lisa herself personally flying Swayze to his hospital treatments, keeping track of his medications and—as she was throughout their long marriage—serving as her husband's "rock," says Rotko. Together the two wrote a memoir, The Time of My Life, due to be published Sept. 29 (see page 86). Battling cancer, he and Lisa "learned the depths," Swayze told PEOPLE in January, "of both of our strength."
That united front defined their remarkable love affair, which saw the couple weather ups and downs as they built a rich, adventure-filled life together that included everything from riding to flying to maintaining their horse ranches in California and New Mexico. "I admire everything imaginable [about Patrick]," Lisa told PEOPLE in January, "especially his courage, strength and humor." Her husband returned the admiration. "I have no greater respect for any other human being on this earth like I have for her," he told ABC's Barbara Walters in an interview taped last December. "This journey ... she's helped me get through it whether it takes getting me angry, you know, whether it's calming me down, whether it's firing me up, whether it's inspiring me."
Swayze's own dogged determination inspired countless others during his cancer battle. Shooting The Beast in Chicago last year, he regularly put in 12-hour days in between grueling chemotherapy treatments on the weekends. "I'm still in awe of the composure he had, given what he must have been going through," says executive producer Cory Concoff. "We were shooting in Chicago in the winter and it was below zero. He came prepared every day." Still, Swayze admitted to moments of self-doubt and anger. "Yeah, I'm scared. Yeah, I'm angry. Yeah, I'm 'why me?'" he told Walters. But he was also realistic about facing down a foe that kills 75 percent of Stage IV patients within the first year of diagnosis. "I've gotten to do a lot of living in my life," he said. "I've said for many years that I'm on borrowed time since I was 30 years old. I've had 159 lives."
It all began in Houston, where the son of Patsy, a choreographer, and Jesse, a champion rodeo cowboy, inherited both his parents' passions. He was 19 and Lisa was just 15 when they met as students at Patsy's ballet studio. Bent on pursuing dance, Swayze left Texas for New York City with $2,000, where Lisa joined him after her high school graduation in 1975; the pair both landed spots in the second company of the Joffrey Ballet. "I knew she was the smartest chick I'd ever met in my life," he told PEOPLE in 2007 of falling for Lisa. "For a long time I didn't feel like I deserved her."
Injuries prompted Swayze to focus on acting: After breaking through in The Outsiders, he secured a spot in movie romance history with his iconic roles in Dirty Dancing and Ghost. Bringing his charming blend of Texas swagger and classically trained artistry to Dancing's tough-but-tender Johnny Castle, the actor also had a secret weapon: Lisa. On the Dirty Dancing set, "she was there a lot because I depend on Lisa," he said. "Lisa and I have built just about every character I've done. You have to understand, we have an ease.... I'd been married a long time when I did Dirty Dancing, and it just gave me so much to bring."
Especially when it came to his memorable dance scenes, including the film's famous lift in the middle of a Catskills lake. "My most important rehearsals were with Lisa in a hotel room," said Swayze. "We'd practice over and over and over." As Grey recalls, "When I think of him, I think of being in his arms when we were kids, dancing, practicing the lift in the freezing lake, having a blast doing this tiny little movie we thought no one would ever see."
Swayze also brought a little cowboy machismo to the film, a surprise box-office smash that earned both Swayze and Grey Golden Globe nominations. "No one danced in for Patrick. No one did his stunts," recalls Dirty Dancing choreographer Kenny Ortega, who worked with Swayze on three films. "I remember like it was yesterday shooting the last scene [in Dancing]: Patrick had to jump off the stage, do a double tour to the floor and then a knee spin. I remember at the time his knee was completely blown and he was wearing braces. He said, 'Turn on all the cameras and keep 'em rolling, because we probably only have one of these in me.' Then I remember him just flying off the stage and just going for it. You could see that the pain was stinging through his body. You wondered how he was able to do what he just did."
It was far from his only awe-inspiring feat of athleticism. "His physical intelligence was unmatched by anyone I have ever met," says his longtime friend Kelly Lynch, who costarred with him in 1989's Road House. "He was a genius in that regard. He could ice skate like a professional. The kickboxer who worked with him on Road House said he could have competed at a world-class level. He was an amazing dancer, but he was just as good as a horseman. Any physical thing he excelled at."
He also lent his "big heart," as Ortega puts it, to his work in Ghost, scoring another smash romantic hit as the departed husband who appears to Demi Moore. "I started realizing this could be one of those roles of a lifetime," the actor said. "I needed to do it for my soul."
Offscreen, "I never saw Patrick in a bad mood," says Lynch. "He was a man who got the hugest kick out of seeing other people smile."
And yet Swayze endured his share of heartache: His father died of a heart attack at age 57 in 1982, and in 1994 his older sister Vicky died at age 45 after a long battle with depression. (Besides Don, he also has a brother Sean, 46, and a sister Bambi, 43.) "I like to believe that I've got a lot of guardian warriors sitting on my shoulder, including my dad," Swayze told Walters.
In recent years Swayze—a smoker who couldn't kick the habit after his cancer diagnosis—talked openly about battling a drinking problem and undergoing rehab. "I played with trying to deal with fame and got stupid and drank too much at one point," he said. "But I feel really fortunate that I've come out on the other end of all of it. Now I'm at a point in my life where I truly appreciate what I have."
It was a warmth and sincerity that endeared him to his fans. While shooting Road House, "you have to remember that this was a time when every girl on the planet was in love with Patrick," says Lynch. "At one point we had to go to some special stadium in the community we were filming in, because the fans there just demanded to see him. I remember he grabbed my hand and insisted I walk out there with him. I was like, 'No way. It's you they want to see!' He said, 'I just want you to feel this. Just once.' Then he walked out there with me, and it was an eruption. He was grinning from ear to ear. He was so happy to be loved, and so humble about it." Even when it came to his most hands-on female admirers. "I constantly have some lady coming up and pinching me on the rear, and all of a sudden I turn around and you see blue hair running back to a group of other blue-haireds going, 'I did it, Martha! I did it! I pinched him!'" recalled the actor, who good-naturedly sent up his heartthrob image playing a Chippendales dancer in a famous 1990 Saturday Night Live skit. "It's kind of silly, but it sure plucks at my heartstrings."
Of course, he never lost sight of the true leading lady in his life. Discussing the secret to their longevity as a couple, he told PEOPLE, "you gotta keep the friendship alive, gotta keep interested, gotta keep remembering it's not about you, but it's about us." Although he and Lisa never had children—she had a miscarriage in 1990 and "we just missed our window," he said—the couple doted on their beloved dogs, Arabian horses and rodeo cattle. Swayze himself never lost faith in his wife's strength. Explaining the appeal of Dirty Dancing and its parallels to his and Lisa's own love story, he summed up in 2007, "I think it's just the simplicity and the honesty of a relationship that could be possible between a man and a woman—and one that could be possible to hang onto as long as you live."
Now, for the first time since she and Patrick first met, Lisa will be facing the days and years to come without the love of her life. It's a heartbreaking prospect—but one that those who know her say she will face with characteristic fortitude and grace. The couple "were partners in the truest sense: He valued her so, so much," says Lynch. "Theirs was the ultimate love story."
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