Jack Danylchuk and Amanda Vaughan
Northern News Services
Wednesday, July 18, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - Grieving family members are holding on to warm memories of two young men whose lives ended in a tragic drowning last week.

Parents and friends of Randy Leisk Jr. will remember him as a sunny kid who loved dogs and found a friend in everyone he met.

The bodies of Michael Lunzy, left, and Randy Leisk Jr., right,.were discovered by volunteers in Great Slave Lake on Thursday.

The 15-year-old was one of two Yellowknife youths who died earlier this month on Great Slave Lake.

Volunteer searchers recovered his body along with that of Michael Luzny, 18, last Thursday in the water off North Arm Park.

Both were members of the city's downtown youth scene and on Friday, their friends built a small shrine to their memory at the entrance to Centre Square Mall

"He loved his dogs," said Randy's mother Darlene. "Goldie and Bear were his best friends."

She will always remember him as a source of surprises.

"One time I was doing his laundry and a frog jumped out of a pocket," she laughed.

Randy Sr. said his son loved all sports, "hunting, fishing, swimming, skiing, but skate boarding was his favourite."

Born in Yellowknife, Randy Jr. moved to Montreal when he was five and returned to Yellowknife four years ago. He was a Grade 9 student at Sir John Franklin.

He is survived by his parents, two brothers, Matthew and Stephan, sister Shana, and numerous cousins.

Funeral arrangements await completion of an autopsy, said Randy Sr.

Betty Luzny, Michael's aunt, said that her nephew was the kind of kid who'd give a friend the shirt off his back if necessary.

"He'd walk through -50C just to go sit with you if you were alone," she said.

Michael was expecting to be a father this month. Betty said he loved kids, and that he would have been "the world's greatest dad."

"He was the only 18-year-old I knew that would jump at the chance when you asked him to babysit," she said. He was her first choice when she needed someone to look after her own son and daughter.

"Girls just want to sit on the phone with boys, with Michael I knew my kids would get to play," Betty said.

Michael loved to hunt and fish and be out on the land and just do anything that involved spending time with his family, especially his brothers. Betty said he was a good kid with lots of friends in the city. She said the Luzny family has been in Yellowknife for about 40 years, and that Michael was a familiar face in town for a lot of people, and many of the older generation had known him since he was born.

Michael is survived by both of his parents and four younger brothers.