THE LIVES THEY LIVED

About the issue

It is our tradition to reserve our last issue of the year for remembering some of the Springfield-area people who have died in the past year.

Those we include here are people who have come to the attention of our writers, and others brought to IT by readers answering our call to memorialize their loved ones in these pages. This year, with some hesitation, we introduced a modest fee for the reader-submitted remembrances, and that seems to have been accepted, judging by the number of submissions.

These people were not all prominent or well known – although some were – but they were all prominent to their families and in the circles they inhabited. Each life has an important story. The lives chronicled here remind us that each one makes a contribution to the community fabric and each one will be missed.

Together these remembrances can represent all the hundreds who departed in 2017 having made Springfield a better place by the lives they lived.

–Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher

JOHN PATRICK CLARKE ...............................p5
JOHN B. ANDERSON ....................................p6
THOMAS R. JONES, SR. ...............................p7
BARBARA DICKERMAN ................................p8
JOHN PHILLIP SCHMIDT ..............................p9
M.T. VANN .................................................p10
JOHN MICHAEL BRILLHART .......................p10
DANIEL R. BUCK, JR. .................................p11
JOHN ALLEN LEWIN ..................................p11
MARY JEAN LINK ......................................p12
JOSEPH “PETE” MORRISON ......................p12
DREXELLEN ARMSTRONG ..........................p13
SUMANTA MITRA ......................................p13
MARY SHAFFER ........................................p14
STAN ZIELINSKI ........................................p14
GEORGE KENNEY. ......................................p15
CHRIS DURBIN ..........................................p15
JIM FORSTALL ...........................................p16
DICK GREGORY .........................................p16
LISA CANNON ...........................................p17
CATHERINE L. STAAB ................................p17
ALFREDA KATAUSKI ..................................p18
DAVID LEACH ............................................p19
JOSEPH KLAUZEN .....................................p19
WILLIAM PATRICK CANAVAN .....................p19