By Teddy Rydquist
Leader Staff Writer
Certain events in our lives are hard to understand.
This is particularly true in the case of Lauren Yankee, a 2018 Oxford High School graduate, who passed on December 29. She was only 20 years old.
While traveling to Florida to visit her grandparents with her longtime boyfriend, fellow 2018 Wildcat graduate Travis Durant, Lauren stopped breathing in a Valdosta, Georgia hotel room.
Durant attempted resuscitation efforts and called 9-1-1, but Lauren never regained consciousness. Her parents, Cari and Eric, made the flight down and were able to spend their daughter’s final two days by her side.
Doctors determined the cause of her passing was sudden heart arrhythmia. Though there is no way to know, many medical professionals believe our loved ones are aware of our presence during times like this, even if we cannot interact with them.
In addition to her parents, Lauren is survived by her four younger sisters, Lilly, 16; Lexie, 15; and identical twins, Avery and Parker, 10.
A tremendous role model for her siblings, it is clear her family meant a great deal to her.
“I got one of the nicest notes from Lauren’s roommate in college,” Cari shared. “As a parent, you always want your kids to be able to talk about your family. You think maybe they do, but you don’t know, right?
“Hannah (McKee) is her roommate and wrote us a note saying, ‘You know, Mr. and Mrs. Yankee, Lauren was so proud of your family. She talked about Lexie making the varsity basketball team as a freshman, she told me about Lilly passing her driver’s test, the twins doing something.’
“That letter to me means a lot because she liked to spend time with her family and talked about her family in a real positive, kind, loving way and was proud of her sisters. That letter means a lot to me.”
Lauren was an accomplished athlete in her own right. A four-year varsity golfer for coach Gretchen Gabler, she was furthering her student-athlete career at Adrian College, where she was a junior, and played one year of soccer and two seasons of basketball for the Wildcats.
Golf was a big part of her life, a love she inherited from her father, but there were many more parts, as well.
“We laughed at Lauren in a good way, she loved to be outside,” Cari said. “We have a running joke in our house about the length of time she’d spend outside in the winter, that nobody could beat her record.
“She always wanted to go and do something, like a ‘what’s next’ kind of girl. I already did this, what are we going to do next? Kind of fun things.
“From an adventurous standpoint, a just wanting to be busy kind of girl, she always loved hanging out her dad, he loves motorcycles. Even early on, she would ride this little plastic four-wheeler in the back with her helmet on for hours.
“I think that was the bug that started it, she really started going into the love of snowmobiling, she’d snowmobile with her dad. Her boyfriend teaches a motorcycle class, and she went and got her endorsement, and this past spring, she bought her first motorcycle.
“Being a mom, I was the mom paranoid gene, but Eric kind of calmed me down, he said, ‘She’s a really good rider, let her get it.’ She just loved riding her motorcycle, she’d go out by herself sometimes, or with Eric or with her boyfriend, and she’d come back with this big smile. It was her way of relaxing, unwinding.”
On the golf course, Lauren was an All-Oakland Activities Association (OAA) and All-County selection as a senior, and recorded her first eagle as a sophomore, which came on a 235-yard par-4 at Glen Oaks in Farmington Hills.
She was a team captain for her final two years as a Wildcat and Lilly, a junior, and Lexie are both current members of Gabler’s program.
“She had the sweetest smile and the best laugh,” Gabler recalled. “She became like a sister to all of her teammates. She was always on a great adventure, she loved riding motorcycles. She and her boyfriend, they had a camper that they would pull around and go camping.
“She was our captain for two years and was a great role model for the team, with her sportsmanship and determination to be a better golfer.”
Gabler attended Lauren’s memorial, which was at the Oakland County Deputy Sheriff’s Association in Pontiac on January 14, as did her collegiate coach, Ryan Williams, who pilots both the men’s and women’s program at Adrian.
In a gesture that speaks to how loved Lauren was, each one of her Bulldog teammates was present, with several members of the men’s team making the approximately 85-mile trip, too.
Lauren committed to Adrian in December 2017, and, after beginning her studies as a Biology major, had switched to Art, with a focus on graphic design.
“Basically, I kind of found her from the Top-50 Junior Tour, and the director of the tour gave me her contact information and I reached out to her summertime of 2017,” Williams shared regarding how he and Lauren became acquainted.
“I had her on-campus in the fall of 2017 to kind of show her around and built a relationship through the recruiting process.
“From the time I met her, I really liked her because she was pretty quiet, and you could tell she was determined and had goals in mind. The type of kid who spoke with her actions rather than her words, which is something I’m always looking for.
“I knew she would be the type of kid who could come in and play right away, and she did, she played a lot her freshman year. As a college player, she grew and her game got better and better each year and she was regularly breaking 90, shooting mid-to-high-80s this past fall and she was starting to kind of turn a corner where she was shooting scores that were going to be leading the team and be super impactful for us.
“Off the golf course, she was just such a good kid. Like I said, she wasn’t super talkative, but what she said would always resonate with everyone around her. Sometimes it would just be something funny and sometimes it would be something really meaningful. When you’re someone that uses few words, when you do pick and choose your spots, it stands out to people and the things you say mean a lot.
“In college golf, and in our program and our culture, we needed someone exactly like that. We needed someone that would show up at practice and do the work, who was motivated, and wasn’t showy, just self-motivated and determined. It was special, you could tell the girls on the team all gravitated toward her, they all listened when she spoke, and they all loved her.”
The Yankee family is transforming their loss into a way to give back to the community. They are establishing a memorial scholarship in Lauren’s honor, which will be awarded to a member of the Oxford High School girls’ golf program.
To generate funds for this scholarship, a memorial golf tournament will be at Paint Creek County Club on Sunday, May 23 at 1 p.m. Kraig and Jeanne Draggoo, close friends of the family, have been instrumental in the creation of this event.
Entry form and sponsor registration information for this tournament will be available soon family members said and interested parties are asked to contact Draggoo at kdraggoo@ecp-i.com with any questions.
Lauren’s organs were donated, in accordance with her wishes. She was passionate about the issue and registered to be an organ donor when she was 16 years old.