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Star of Muncie Central 1954 state runner-up team dies

MUNCIE, Ind. — Nannette Flowers remembers the exact moment she and her husband, Gene Flowers, first met. She was in the water with her friends at the Muncie public swimming pool when…

“He jumped in, on top of me basically,” she remembers, laughing. “It wasn’t a dive. Kind of a cannon ball or something.”

That’s when they were 15 years old, and they’ve been together ever since. Nannette was by Gene’s side as he took his final breaths at a hospital in Munster last week.

Gene Flowers, 81, died April 27 of pneumonia after a long battle with bone cancer and several other ailments.