Parkville (Missouri) lost a friend when intense chemotherapy failed to cure Jack Friedman of the multiple myeloma with which he was diagnosed over a year ago. Thankfully, we all gained a lot by having had the opportunity to be around this one-man force of nature.

Literally and figuratively, Jack's are some big shoes to fill - his enormous size-13 Adidas were something to behold, as was the big-hearted energy he applied to everything on which he worked. People like Jack don't just grow on trees, as they say, and his dedication will be tough to replace for this community.

It was readily apparent that community was what Jack found when he moved to Parkville from New York to attend Park University (then Park College), from which he graduated in 1971. And the community benefitted greatly from this transplanted easterner, who took to our midwestern soil like a native. The symbiosis which took place benefitted us all. His work on behalf of Platte County Senior Services, the City of Parkville, the Parkville Nature Sanctuary, and English Landing Park stand out among many accomplishments. Without people like Jack, a community is only a collection of dwellings and businesses. Jack enriched his surroundings; he helped create the sense of community which so many of us find so valuable about Parkville.

Lanny Frakes, a vendor at the farmers market, related a story about Jack. Last February, when Jack was back from treatment in Arkansas but not feeling real well, some of the vendors and city officials were meeting to discuss this year's market. Despite being in less-than-tip-top health, Jack made a point of thanking Lanny for having brought pumpkins for the Halloween celebration held at the Parkville Nature Sanctuary - an event Jack hadn't even been around for, as he was in Arkansas receiving treatment. Lanny noted that, if it had been him in Jack's condition, he'd have been feeling too sorry for himself to worry about thanking somebody for something they'd done 4 months ago. But that's the kind of person Jack was, somebody with an outward focus - the kind of person who makes the whole of a community more than the sum of its parts.

Personally, I recall having lively discussions about how things were going in the area, both of us agreeing in so many words that, like Edward Abbey said, "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell". It is sadly ironic that a malignancy took Jack from us. Yet despite his misgivings, he admonished me that it wasn't the role of an elected representative of the people to strictly advance his own agenda: he felt compelled to try to do the work of all the city's residents, and to advance the cause of the city's greater good. This sort of outlook is what made Jack a community leader.

That's the sort of quality which Parkville will miss by not having Jack around any more. But I have a more selfish reason for missing him. With a smile on his face, Jack came up and introduced himself to my wife and me at the farmers market a few years ago. We'd seen each other around over the years, but somehow missed connecting on a personal level. And now he's been taken away from us. He wasn't a kid, but I can't help but feel his departure was premature, that there was so much more to talk about, to complain about, to laugh about, to experience. I'm sorry for the opportunity lost. But I'm sure glad that he took the initiative to introduce himself that day, and that, 30-some years ago, Jack Friedman made Parkville his home, and a better place in the bargain.