When Hugh Moore passed away after an extended battle with cancer on March 10 at age 67, the Springfield area arts scene lost an indelible presence. Moore was a prolific poet and painter, and in his role as president of Springfield Poets and Writers, as well as on the board that puts together the Route 66 Film Festival each year, he consistently had a hand in keeping things lively in town.

In addition, every week on WQNA, Moore hosted “Flyover Zone,” his self-described “variety show,” a three-hour combination of whimsy and thoughtful interviews conducted by Moore in a style that was by turns chatty and incisive. “Flyover Zone” often recalled the spirit of free-form radio of the 1960s and ’70s. Moore’s enthusiasm for doing the show extended almost to the end: he hosted his final episode of “Flyover Zone” via Skype from his hospital bed on Feb. 28 and had been planning to do the same the following Saturday until his health took a turn for the worse.

Raised in Williamsville, Hugh Moore was as well known for his playful, open presence and unapologetic eccentricity as for his artistic output. “He was a big influence in my life,” says his younger sister, Dorene Gillman Campbell of Williamsville. “He introduced me to The Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East when I was a young teen and encouraged my love of the Beat poets.”

His niece, Dulcinea Gillman, describes Moore as “a parent figure and also a rival sibling,” as they competed for the favor of the family matriarch, Hugh’s grandmother (and Dulcinea’s great-grandmother) referred to by all as ‘Me-maw.’ Now founder and CEO of architecture firm Number 9 Design in Elmhurst, near Chicago, Gillman also counts him as an early influence, not just through the Charles Bronson and Stanley Kubrick movies he – appropriately or not – exposed her to as a youngster, but due to his uniquely positive approach to life. “Most people grow up and get bitter and burdened,” she says, “but he did not. He had a pleasant disposition and a positive outlook. He was intelligent, observant and well read. He was truly engaged in life and untouched by the rat race, the cultural expectations of how to be.”

She has memories from her grade school years of her uncle parading around Williamsville “in purple knickers with long cascading brown locks. My schoolmates would make fun of me and say, ‘Hey – I saw your Uncle Jesus yesterday.’ It was embarrassing in a way but I also liked it. I, too, embraced my weirdness – encouraged and promoted by Uncle Hugh, of course.”

During the 1970s, Moore attended the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and later worked at the Harvard law library in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before moving back to Williamsville in 1980.

It wasn’t long after returning to central Illinois from the East Coast that Moore met his future wife, Lana Wildman. “He came back to town from Boston,” Wildman recalls. “He had promised his grandmother that she would never have to go into a nursing home – so when his grandfather died he came back to stay with her, and she never did have to go into a nursing home.” Wildman was working at a store in Williamsville when Moore wandered in one day. “I knew that he was new in town and that he was Dorene’s brother, so I talked to her about him. We just hit it off and I loved all of his art and music.” Wildman also praises her late husband’s optimistic outlook. “He was always looking forward and never back – that’s what he tried to teach me.”

Many of the online remembrances left on the “Flyover Zone” Facebook page describe Moore as “kind” – an apt enough word, but not the whole story, according to Wildman. “He was also driven to get his work out there. One of his fears was that he would wake up one day and be out of ideas. So he constantly started new projects and never ran out of anything. He left so much work behind,” she says, “work that’s still wanting to find an audience.”

“He didn’t even tell anybody he was sick until last August,” recalls Dulcinea Gillman. “When I saw him the Thursday before he died, we didn’t talk about the horrible inevitable, we just shot the shit.”

“He is gone but he lingers in my being like no other person can or ever will,” says Dorene Campbell. “He was my brother.”

A “HughFest in honor of his Hughness” will be held on Saturday, May 2, in Williamsville.