Cathleen Allison/Nevada Appeal
Geraldine Talley threw her hands up in disbelief Tuesday afternoon and announced through sobs she could no longer talk about her grandson, Justin Talley.
"I can't believe we're doing this," the 66-year-old Carson City woman said. "Just last week he was coming home."
She clutched photos of the 20-year-old man who on Monday suddenly fell ill on a Greyhound bus near West Wendover at the state line between Utah and Nevada.
Justin died shortly thereafter of spinal meningitis on the way to a Salt Lake City hospital.
A 2006 graduate of Carson High School, Justin was raised mostly by grandparents Geraldine and Royce Talley. He worked a number of jobs, most notably as an employee of the Boys & Girls Club of Western Nevada, where he ran the games room.
"He was our whole life," Geraldine said. "I have eight grandchildren. But, Justin, he was our life."
And Justin felt the same way about his grandparents, said his aunt, Barbara James.
"He was devoted to them."
According to James, Justin was working in Denver with a group that sells magazines door to door. He'd been on the job about four weeks when he decided he'd traveled enough and wanted to come home.
"Grandma was getting ready to go through a medical procedure and Justin wanted to be here with her," James said.
It wouldn't be the first time that Justin would be by his grandmother's side through an illness. Once before he cared for her when she had a kidney removed.
He called last weekend and asked his aunt to pick him up from the Reno bus station on Sunday. But Saturday night, he called again to say he missed his bus out of Denver and wouldn't be arriving in Reno until Monday.
During the second phone call, Justin said he felt like he had the flu.
The details of what happened once Justin boarded the bus in Denver are sketchy, James said, but at some point on the trip, he fell seriously ill.
A Carson City friend who accompanied him to Denver told the family that his lips were blue and he was vomiting. Emergency crews were called and they loaded him onto a helicopter.
And then, Justin " the musician, skateboarder, songwriter and mentor to countless Carson City children through his work at the youth club " was dead.
"I don't know how it took a 6-foot-2, 20-year-old like that," said James. "This is such an incredible loss to our family."
Royce Talley left Tuesday to claim his grandson's body, said James.
"Nobody can breathe. Nobody can move until Justin comes home," she said.
The Talley home on Goldfield was filled with heart-stopping grief as family arrived in town. At the same time, there were moments of lightness when someone recalled a Justin memory that for a second made them forget he was gone.
They talked of how, when gas prices rose, JT, as he was often called, gave up on his truck and rode his skateboard to work. They spoke of the music he and his grandfather made together.
"He donated his heart and his spirit to everything he did," said his mother, Teresa, who lives in Arizona with Justin's siblings Austin, 13, and Ashley, 10. "He had high morals, loyalty and standards. What a blessing of a child."
A funeral will be held Monday. Arrangements have yet to be finalized, James said.
- Contact reporter F.T. Norton at ftnor
ton@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1213.
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