Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, September 10, 1994                   TAG: 9409120077
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER NOTE: above
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SALEM MAN WAS SOON TO BE A DAD

In three months, the Salem native expected to become a father and get to hold in his arms either Jayson David or Eryn Michel.

"We didn't want to know the sex of the baby," said Kristi Jamison Lamanca, who is six months pregnant.

Dave Lamanca's death in a USAir crash near Pittsburgh on Thursday ended a lot of dreams for the Lamanca and Jamison families.

The 27-year-old University of Virginia graduate was an executive in the family business. He also helped coach the Hoosiers Little League basketball team and was in his third year as a varsity basketball official.

And he had decided that he would join Windsor Hills Methodist Church, where Kristi is a member.

"He wanted to be baptized when the baby was," Kristi said Friday.

Kristi and Dave met in 1985 at a social for UVa freshmen. They married in 1990.

She spoke with Dave at 2 p.m. Thursday while he was still in Chicago at a computer seminar he had been attending since Tuesday. He wanted to know the results of medical tests she had been given that day.

"He couldn't wait until he got home to find out," said Kristi, 26. She has had a somewhat difficult pregnancy and recently was diagnosed with gestational diabetes.

Kristi told him the tests indicated she was fine, but that she wished he could come home early. "I wanted him to come home all week," she said.

He couldn't, he told her.

John Lamanca also spoke with his son Thursday when Dave called Chesapeake X-Ray Corp., the family X-ray product distribution company where he was business manager. Dave's mother, Shirley Lamanca, also was at work, but she didn't talk to him.

"I told John to tell him I'd see him when he got back," she recalled.

Working together in the business increased the family's closeness, said John and Shirley Lamanca.

"In addition to being my son, he was a business associate, a close buddy and a golfing partner," Lamanca said.

Father and son were regulars on the course at Hidden Valley County Club. Most times, Dave won, his father said.

Dave played on a state champion golf team at Salem High School.

At Kristi's suggestion, the family informed the school Friday that it was setting up a golf scholarship fund in Dave's name.

"He'd like that," Kristi said. She said she got the idea for the scholarship as she sat awake all Thursday night at her Roanoke County home.

She had been ready to leave for the airport to meet Dave's flight when her parents, Brenda and Lewis Jamison, phoned and told her to wait for them.

Brenda Jamison said she heard a television announcement about the Pittsburgh crash and thought it might have been Dave's flight.

Keywords:
FATALITY