When the young Nash family moved to Nevada, Mo., some 31 years ago, I was somehow chosen to become a member of the Nevada Public Library Board of Directors. As a new professor of English at Cottey, I was quite flattered, and proceeded to act in a way I thought was constructive, but which I now realize was diametrically opposed to the understood rules and regulations that had grown up to suit the needs of the Nevada community. The member who took me aside and gently mended my ways was the chair Franklin Norman.

The late Franklin Norman. I can hardly imagine Nevada, Missouri, without the gentle ministrations of Mr. Franklin Norman. A benign presence is now missing.

In one sense, I never considered him a 20th-century American. To me, he always seemed an 18th-century English gentleman, a man who lived according to a strict code of honorable conduct by which a group of like-minded citizens lived in close harmony. His wife Olga, gone now for a long time, had been a teacher of music at Cottey, and in her gentle behavior had seemed the perfect mate for him. Like Fitzgerald's Dick Diver, each had the ability to ask questions of you that made you feel like the most important person in the world.

Franklin, Olga, my wife Ginny and I were all audience members of a professional music series held in the auditorium of UM-Joplin. The four of us met in the auditorium, and after the performance drove to some easily accessible coffee shop, where we could assess the performance we'd just heard. After paying particular attention to Olga, who brought, of course, a trained ear to her comments, we began talking of other matters, and this is where Franklin shone.

From a music topic he'd jump across the game board to, for example, a memory of taking the Nevada trolley car up Austin to Cottey College, where he'd get off at College Street, to visit Olga at Cottey College. From there he'd bring up topics with which only he was familiar. It was fascinating to me because it brought alive not only a landscape, but a lifestyle. He would travel across a vast landscape of old Nevada topics, fascinating all his listeners.

Someone once invited me to be a member of the Nine O'clock Coffee Club, but I had a conflicting class to teach, and couldn't take him up on it.

Now, I look at those photos of the club members past and present, and wish I'd been able to join in those fun and constructive times.

Both Steve Moyer and Ralph Pokorny have written eloquently about Franklin Norman, in the December 20 issue of this newspaper. Let me end this brief piece by seconding all those persons, and they are innumerable, who regret the passing of a positive and kindly Nevadan.

Whence comes such another?