In the days that followed the Feb. 7 death of Oak Park Elementary District 97 Trustee Peter Traczyk, his friend and neighbor Dan Greenstone listened to what the children in the 300 block of Scoville Avenue had to say about the civic leader.
Like the adults who gathered on Valentine’s Day to express their love for the man dubbed The Mayor of Scoville, the children remembered him for giving them rides to school on rainy days, getting out his tool box and fixing things for neighbors, and allowing neighborhood dogs to wrestle on his lawn.
“I think you can tell a lot about a man by how he interacts with children,” Greenstone said.
Though Traczyk was a member of Good Shepard Lutheran Church, the memorial service took place at United Lutheran Church to accommodate the hundreds who braved the bitter cold to support the family and share their memories. Mourners included family, friends and village leaders from each of the taxing bodies.
The family-centered service included a capella performances of “Ubi Caritas” and the Beatles’ “I Will” by the Percy Julian Middle School Performance Choir and “Love is the More Excellent Way” by the William Beye Elementary School Gospel Choir. In addition to these being schools served by Traczyk, first in the PTO at Beye and later as a member of the District 97 Board, they are schools that have been attended by his children.
Between sniffles and chuckles, several mourners, like Greenstone, remembered Traczyk for the brilliance of his personality and intellect, his love for the outdoors, and “the way he laughed so often, so loud and so long.”
Traczyk lived by four “remarkable traits” Greenstone called The Peter Principles: kindness, the ability to unite people from diverse background, hopefulness and “brimming with joy.”
“If there is a person in your life who has all of these qualities, you’ve been blessed,” Greenstone said.
Greenstone and his wife Heidi met Traczyk when he was the first to welcome them to the neighborhood.
“Within 20 minutes, we were friends,” Greenstone recalled. “I never made a friend quite so easily.”
Jeff Charkow, a Connecticut native who met fellow Yankee Traczyk 30 years ago when they were students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, followed his best friend to live in Oak Park.
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“Peter was bigger than life,” he said. “In many ways, I was the Robin to Peter’s Batman.”
Gregory Friess said he and Traczyk made the journey from brothers-in-law to brothers at the family cabin where Traczyk liked to ride an old John Deere tractor.
Though many have wondered over the past week what led Traczyk to commit suicide, Friess encouraged mourners not to dwell on that.
“I do feels strongly that our challenge is not to answer the questions but to accept the world as it is,” he said.
Traczyk’s friend Paul Buchbinder was asked by the family to share a poem he wrote called “Peter’s Path” that spoke of how his family, friends and neighbors gathered for a candlelight vigil on a path Traczyk had cleared through the snow.
“Peter was always the first out on the block to blow away the snow to allow children to get to school, people to get to work,” he said.