[Reprinted from the June 3, 1979 issue of Simi Valley's Enterprise]

Bob Artz, a friend, was killed in the fiery crash of that ill-fated DC-10 in Chicago on a Friday.

And I got a letter from him the following Tuesday.

As a newspaper reporter I've heard and read about such things happening — and about getting a letter from a friend or relative who is already dead — but the incident still clings to me.

Bob's letter was as breezy as he always was. His smile kept leaping off the page at me, and that illusion would be interupted with the sight of that huge plane tipping up and going down.

Bob came to Simi Valley from a long stint in Washington, D.C. He arrived here at a stormy time for this district. We hit it off because he knew I had a job to do and he had a job to do, and the two were going to clash occasionally.

Bob could be onery and tough—he was the kind of public official who liked openness and candor, but he wanted it tempered with understanding. He was in the truest sense of the word a professional. He disliked bureaucrats who were pigheaded because he was a bureaucrat who wasn't. He was a public servant in the truest sense of the word.

He was a master of pulling people together to work for a cause because he recognized the value of dissent. If

Illinois Parks and Recreation 3 July/August, 1979

someone was critical of the park district, he wanted to know those views, either to correct a situation, or explain why he thought the situation was as it should be. He relished brickbats and bouquets from the public because he understood how to handle both.

Bob viewed Proposition 13 as a setback, not an ending. He viewed it as the will of the people, whom he didn't blame for feeling the way they felt about property taxes. It was a snag that was rough on him and on the district, but he was a man who looked forward, not backward. His job was to do the best he could with what he had, and that's exactly what he did.

The Illinois Association of Park Districts is the dream of any executive director of parks anywhere in the country.

The association is 51 years old, encompasses 2,000 elected park commissioners and 345 districts, plus 12 forest preserve districts and five conservation districts.

The association is one of the strongest in the country because local districts didn't abdicate local control to state government.

After Bob was offered the job in Illinois and decided he'd take it, he apologized for such a short stay here. He vowed he would keep in touch because he loved this area and its people so much.

In his letter, written the same day he was killed in the plane crash, he said his life had been "a merry-go-round" but some of his major programs were in full swing or completed in Springfield. He said he would see me when he arrived in Simi Valley to make the final move to Illinois.

Death is as much a part of living as having babies and getting gray.

But it seems so useless and senseless and such a mystery when it happens to someone who left a mark of quality on a community and on your own life. Bob would be the first one to remind me that I had to quit looking backward. We were always reminding one another not to do that.

We can't look back.

We should look forward with the memories of people like Bob Artz riding along with us.

His life was valuable because he was good at what he did, he didn't dwell on what might have been, but what was.

Part of his legacy may be physical, in the form of some sort of memorial, but most of his legacy will be carried inside others for as long as they live and perhaps beyond.

Bob would be a little embarrassed about this column, but he wouldn't dwell long on its aftermath. He'd smile and be off to catch a merry-go-round.

He also viewed death as senseless and a waste — unless the person to which it happened hadn't given life his best shot. Bob Artz had.

Illinois Parks and Recreation 5 July/August, 1979