Lance Owens was a police officer in East Orange, New Jersey. His little sister, Dana, wasn’t Queen Latifah to the world yet, but to him she was already his pride.
To celebrate her brother’s birthday, as well as her success and the early earnings from her career, and to spoil him and share her fortune so her family could live more comfortably, Latifah decided to give him a Kawasaki. Together, they rode motorcycles through the streets of Newark and the Oranges.
One day in 1992, Lance went out on that motorcycle without her. Latifah was supposed to ride alongside him, but a friend was moving, so she spent the day carrying boxes. Off duty, Lance collided with a moving car. He was only 24.
“My world was destroyed”, she said years later. She said it hit her to the core and that she was never the same again. She had just bought a house where she planned to live with him and their mother. She nearly quit her career.
But she never let go of what he left her. Ever since, she has worn the key to that motorcycle around her neck, and she also wore it on her series “Living Single”. She dedicated the album “Black Reign” to Lance and wrote “Winki’s Theme”, after the nickname she used for him. And she kept riding motorcycles.
Every February, on his birthday, she writes to him: “We will always swim in the energy of eternity. I love you to infinity”.
Some brothers leave. And some sisters carry the key all their lives.
