Dancer was like a flower gone so soon

“You’re like a flower.

“Pretty and dances in the wind.”

The parting thought was among the heartfelt words written around the portrait of Nancy G. Lopez-Ruiz in the back of St. Joseph Catholic Church.

Dance was Nancy’s gift to her family and many friends.

And, like a flower in the wind, she was gone much too soon.

One week after the vibrant Bayshore High graduate’s tragic death, an air of disbelief permeated Friday morning’s funeral Mass as her pall-covered coffin lie before the altar.

Just 22, Nancy was realizing her dreams after moving to South Florida a few years ago.

She’d gotten engaged.

She’d had a part in Kenny Chesney’s 2009 video: “Went Out Last Night.”

She recently made the Miami Heat dance team.

Friends and classmates, some of them young mothers now, spoke of receiving Nancy’s texts and phone calls sharing her excitement.

Then one week later her life was snuffed out, struck by another motorist while Nancy rode her motorcycle in Fort Lauderdale.
 
 
Read more in Saturday's Mannix About Manatee.