A Child of the '80s Remembers Patrick Swayze

When I was a teenager, The Outsiders was standard slumber party fare. We watched Patrick Swayze as the old man of a group of boys who all went on to have successful film careers.

Obviously older than the others, Swayze quickly moved on to more adult roles. I got extra credit in history class for watching him play Orry Main in North and South, although the historical content of the mini-series was questionable.

I didn't see Dirty Dancing when it came out in 1987, but the following summer, when I was working at Girl Scout camp, several of us watched it on video during a break. We fell in love, not with Swayze, but with the music and romance of it all. We sang and danced to the songs for the rest of the summer.

And when I went to college in the fall, the music went with me. Swayze sang "She's Like the Wind" while I mooned over the boy in the cafeteria line who once sat and played the piano with me.

Another year, when I went home with my roommate for Thanksgiving, we went to see Ghost. The over-romanticism sometimes made us giggle. But we went away with "Unchained Melody" and the image of Swayze and Demi Moore at the potter's wheel stuck in our heads. And when my roommate, in turn, came to my house over Christmas break, we watched Road House (not one of his best films).

When I got married, my husband introduced me to something old (Red Dawn) and something newer (To Wong Foo). We admired his versatility: acting, singing, dancing, and even drag!

Mind you, I was never obsessed with Patrick Swayze. And after all, we girls all knew that he was much older than us and happily married to another dancer, Lisa Niemi, who had even appeared with him in Steel Dawn and One Last Dance (she was also the inspiration for "She's Like the Wind"). But looking back, I can see that he was one of the actors/artists who appeared throughout my life, even to today.

When Swayze went public with his cancer, we watched that, too. Not in the tabloids, but when he spoke out about the cancer on TV, and told us he wasn't done fighting, and when he even took a job in the TV series The Beast, we watched and listened and admired.

With his lengthy career, quality performances, and versatility, I don't think Patrick Swayze will be quickly forgotten.