Richard L. Fliam

Death finally caught his most frustrating quarry Richard "Rick" Louis Fliam on November the 10th, 2021, but only after Rick had spent 82 years laughing in his face. Indeed, the only thing Rick seemed to enjoy more than skating Death's grasp, was laughing with his many friends and family about the experience afterward over drinks. Friends he made everywhere he went with an easy charm and self-deprecating humor. Few men who live to 82 arrive dead at the hospital twice. Fewer still joke about it on a regular basis. Rick was one of them. Despite Death's best efforts, he died surrounded by his loving family in old age. To the last moment the question of when that merry chase would end was a difficult guess.
Born April the 29th, 1939 in Grosse Pointe, Michigan to Joseph and Mary Fliam, Rick began his flirtations with adventure and lifelong love of fast cars drag racing in the heydays of "Motor City'' Detroit. Upon reaching college, and promptly deciding it was boring, he joined the Michigan National Guard. On joining the Michigan National Guard, and promptly deciding it was boring and cold, his sergeant convinced him to "jump out of a perfectly good airplane for an extra dollar a day." An experience he described as "interesting for a man afraid of heights" and a fact that he reminded his children of whenever the notion of sky diving was discussed. It's here that he acquired another lifelong hobby, guns, becoming a marksman.
Deciding he needed yet more adventure, he joined a unit deployed to Vietnam before the "official" start of hostilities. He spent two years in a place he described as one of the most beautiful in the world. While he was enlisted, his parents moved back to Colorado and he transferred his civilian life there as well. Rick's military career ended in a Corvette wreck on leave, as war apparently wasn't dangerous enough.
Ever the outlier, his next career was that of a race car driver. He worked at dealerships, then on the race team, and then improbably took the driver's seat for Corvette racing. His friends know his cheerful, laughing, recounting of going backwards, at 100 miles an hour, on fire, into a wall after turn 8 at Leguna Seca.
Given that road racing seemed banal, he switched to desert trophy truck racing, where he met many of his enduring friends. He raced the Baja 500, the Firecracker 400, and countless others. The stories that accompany his career as a racer were often his favorite to repeat. His son loves his recounting of loaning the brakes on his pre-runner to the race truck. Then driving with Lisa, pregnant at the time, a hundred miles back to Las Vegas without brakes. When asked "how?!", the response was "carefully."
Rick met the love of his life Lisa on a beach at Lake Mcconaughy later in life than most. Still adventurous and fun at 47, he charmed a woman nearly 17 years his junior into being his wife. They were married in Las Vegas, moved into the family home, and shortly thereafter he nearly fainted when informed she was pregnant with twins. Apparently, twins are more terrifying than race cars and war.
His children Amy and Richard slowed his taste for death-defying stunts only some. They recall foundly a childhood filled with adventure. He onced towed our boat to the Gulf and nearly sank in twenty foot waves. He once bribed his way into Mexico on an expired passport. He used a forty foot motorhome to tow a thirty foot boat across the country. He loved boats and towed the family to over a 100 lakes. He couldn't even swim. Life with Rick for his family was never anything short of interesting.
It was also full of his many friends and love of books. Lisa and Rick shared an enduring passion for dinner parties and drinks with friends. They trained Amy and Richard on the proper way to pour wine. His family learned a never ending torrent of history from his voracious reading, especially on the subjects of military history. Never ones to shy from discourse, dinners included every subject of interest in the world: politics, history, food, travel, and of course, race cars and guns.
Rick's teasing humour was a center of the family. It was so teasing he once provoked Amy into throwing a fork across the dinner table at him. Even in his final days he joked with the doctors and nurses who treated him often, bringing an enduring lightness to a difficult situation with dark humor.
Rick loved adventure in business as well. A serial entrepreneur, he owned service stations, a hardware store, one of the first U-Haul businesses, a large construction equipment painting business, and a family genealogy business among others.
He was also a devout keeper of the family's pets, despite his never ending threats to drive the family dog Adobe back to New Mexico where she came from. Or to cook up Amy Jasper poor Jasper James. He kept a beautiful saltwater fish tank, a wonderful Koi pond, and of course his cats Grace and Winston. They slept on very special beds in his office with him every day. They did not accept the beds being replaced or cleaned.
He leaves his beloved wife Lisa with a mess in his office as always, the terrorist cat Winston, and the twins, Richard and Amy. He leaves his children with fond memories of enduring love, humour, adventure, and three demanding granddogs: Jasper James, Samoa, and Magnus. He'd have hated this obituary, or anyone crying over him, but loved talking about the stories in it.
As such in lieu of flowers, we know that he'd have loved to see you all again, have another drink, and laugh over old stories. So please join us Thursday November the 18th at 4pm for a viewing. He'll be buried next to his mother and father in Littleton Cemetery on Friday November the 19th, 2021 at 3pm. Heflebower Funeral Services will be live-streaming the graveside service on their Facebook Page. If you do not have a Facebook account, you can go to the bottom of the Heflebower homepage at www.heflebowerfuneralservices.com and click on the Facebook icon. You can view the live-streamed service without creating an account (see photos tab for instructions, also). There will be a celebration of his life at the house afterwards with some food and drinks.
If you'd like to make donations in his name the Denver Dumb Friends League would be good reparations for the time he spent teasing the family pets. That or the Cancer Research Institute to prevent the disease that took him.
Donations suggested to http://cancerresearch.org/ and dumb friends league https://www.ddfl.org/.