VanGilder offers salute to Dick Ferguson

In his latest effort, Carthage Press columnist and former managing editor Marvin VanGilder offers a tribute to Dick Ferguson, who died last week at age 88:

Clearly, Richard F. Ferguson was a man of the 20th Century.

However, his productive life continued deep into the 21st and his legacy of performance, of devotion to high ideals and of creative skill certainly will endure through many centuries to come. Others have assembled greater wealth and bigger titles but no other man in the nation has matched the intensity of his patriotism and the superb exercise of citizenship to rise to his standard. No other has better exemplified the values, the patriotic zeal, the level of courage and determination and confidence in the worth of his chosen community of residence to more completely match the ideals of the Greatest Generation of Americans. Yes he was at Pearl Harbor during the “day of infamy” and in subsequent years he has done more than any other individual to make certain the events of that day and the worth of those who died in that moment but beyond that and beyond his devotion to fundamental Americanism he also did more to sell Carthage and its virtues to the world in a super Chamber of Commerce zeal unmatched in history.