What to write about this week? Especially as the campaign frenzy peaks, there are more than enough ideas to play with, issues to address, observations to make.

I was mulling over the possibilities for today’s column when I learned that Jack Zollo had passed away. No question: “Valley Voices” for Oct. 28, 2008, is a tribute to that extraordinary man.

A short version of his story appears on page 200 of “Rumford Stories” (available at the Rumford Library), opposite a photo portrait by Mark Silber. The photo is one of Mark’s finest; it hung in a juried exhibition at the Portland Museum. No Jolly Jack here – more of that Jack below – but the unflinching veteran of World War II, saluting his country’s flag in a Veterans Day parade in 1999.

If you were to hear the tapes of my oral history interview with Jack, you’d hear me laughing, laughing a lot. The man was a wonderful teller of tales, and he told me more than would fit in the Rumford story frame: underage, unlicensed driving in Boston’s Italian North End with his grandfather and the policeman they encountered. The first time he flew a plane and what his superior officer had to say about the exploit. And many others.

Though Jack loved to tell war stories and didn’t hang back on the subject of being Orono’s first “Little All-American” football player, and excelling academically, too, Jack put on no airs. He unfailingly stopped to visit with the disabled veteran who, for many years, daily occupied a bench on Congress Street.

Until a year or so ago, Jack wrote me occasional notes commenting on Valley Voices or offering leads to interesting subjects. One of the latter introduced me to Harrison Elliott, another of Rumford’s sports greats. He and Dick Austin and Jack Zollo rode together to Orono, swapping sports stories all the way over and back. He loved his alma mater.

Jack Zollo was a dedicated Rotarian. When women were admitted to the Rumford Area Rotary Club back in 1987, he didn’t approve. And his disapproval was vocal. He pretended to give the first women Rotarians a hard time. But they gave it back: At each meeting, the women would wait for Jack to take a seat and then rush to sit beside him. Did he really disapprove of women in Rotary? One of his daughters served as president of the Rockland Rotary; we know that because Jack, with great pride, told us.

The same Jack Zollo – chatting with friends on Congress Street, giving and getting fun at Rotary meetings, sailing on Worthley Pond, running the Rumford Falls Power Mill, stepping out in the Veterans Day parade – was a cosmopolitan. He chaired the prestigious American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Power Committee. He served on President Carter’s Energy Committee. He was a special assistant to the secretary of energy in the Reagan administration. He was a world traveler. He visited 69 countries and all 50 states. But like his wife Louise McCray Zollo, he was happiest at home in Rumford.

None of the legends about the legend were re-told at Jack Zollo’s farewell last Friday. One of his sons spoke of his dad’s love of country, his deep religious faith, and, above all, his love of his family.

They would come to Rumford for holidays, his granddaughter told us. Her grandfather, Jack Zollo, was, she said, “the motive and the destination.”

Contact Linda Farr Macgregor at: [email protected]