A 6 foot 5 swingman with dunk-contest energy and hang-time that made a play look frozen. Beat writer Ray Dietz wrote that Vance hung up there like a gecko stuck to a wall, like gravity forgot the address. The name stuck. Then it gave the whole franchise its animal.

In the Stallions clincher he went for 41 and ended it with a windmill at the buzzer that the Covington crowd still describes like a religious experience.

He refused to go to Calder City. He stayed in Covington, slid out of the public eye, became a local rumor. His whereabouts are a thread we are still pulling on. Not a tragedy. A man who got erased and kept living.