Thank you, Jack F.K. Bungart and Thomas Gase, so much, for your wonderful pieces on Richard Freedman.
I met Rich first in the late 1990s, years before I started working at the Vallejo Flood and Wastewater District in 2004. We met during a December First Friday celebration in downtown Benicia, and he was ringing a bell and collecting for the Salvation Army.
How fitting that he was helping people in need, as always. My husband, writer Kevin Nelson, introduced us; Rich would interview Kevin whenever he had a new book published. And wasn’t that typical Rich as well, helping another writer?
It was while reading Rich’s article on Kevin’s “The Golden Game” that we noticed the job listing for public information officer at the District, and I applied.When I got the job, Rich and I had lots of contact. I would come into the full newsroom to track him down, or he’d call to get our take on things happening in town.
Rich wrote a delightful piece in the Times-Herald when he accompanied a fourth-grade class on a tour of our wastewater treatment plant. I’m fairly sure the headline read: “Eww, That Smell.” Classic Rich, and with a nice nod to Lynyrd Skynyrd.
We got to know and love Megan as well, through Northgate Church, and delighted in how deep in love Rich was with her. When Rich’s son Cameron died, we shared another grief as well, that of the loss of a child. Rich said we now belong to the same club that no one wants to join.
Rich was a lovely, hilarious, a deeply dedicated and caring person. My heart is just breaking, especially for Megan, but for myself and my husband as well. He was a good friend.
— Jennifer Kaiser/Vallejo