The last image that some neighbors and friends have of Peter Traczyk is of the late D97 school board member and candidate for D200 school board plowing the snow.
“The last time I saw Peter was this week using his blower to plow our entire walkway—he would plow the whole block,” said Heidi Lynch, a neighbor and friend of Peter and Cindy Traczyk, and the latter’s Sunday morning jogging mate.
“He was so proud of his son Gib being accepted into the Milwaukee School of Engineering,” she recalled.Â
“He was so excited about putting down the first deposit. He was just the greatest guy in our neighborhood. He was the mayor—the one who connected everybody. He sent out everybody’s contact information when two families moved onto the block recently. My husband coached with him. Everybody’s husbands coached with him.”Â
Paul Buchbinder, who lives one block down from Traczyk and attended Grace Lutheran Church with him, said their last encounter was a simple wave of acknowledgment after the two had spotted each other blowing away the more than 18 inches of snow that had fallen last week during one of the roughest blizzards in recent memory.
Last Saturday, Feb. 7, the heavy snow having mostly receded under several days of warmth and sunlight, a passerby discovered Traczyk’s body in the Sunset Bridge Meadow along North Avenue, east of First Avenue. The Cook County medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.Â
But those who knew him best couldn’t so easily arrive at conclusions. Buchbinder is still lost on the path to understanding. The night after learning of Traczyk’s death, he could barely sleep.
“Peter’s laugh was big,” Buchbinder said. “It was really big. His laugh made you laugh,” he recalled, which makes his attempts to understand the present circumstances even more difficult, he noted.
Frozen in a similar state of confusion, Lynch and her fellow joggers were nonetheless wracked with the desire to do something for Cindy Traczyk.
“We were trying to think of something to show her we were thinking of her without her feeling that she has to interact or give anything back,” said Deb Poe, who along with Lynch and several other members of their running club decided to plan a vigil Sunday night.
“It was pretty impromptu,” Lynch said. “We just decided to light candles and word spread very quickly.
“All of us just coordinated,” she said. “All afternoon people dropped off candles and mason jars. I just think we needed to get together and let the family know how loved they all are. That was the idea, very simple, just an opportunity for people to do something concrete, doable and immediate to show our support and love.”
It was a fitting show of pragmatism for a man who Jassen Strokosch, a longtime friend of Traczyk’s, said embodied the concept.
“I have always appreciated his ability to get things done,” said Strokosch, who was helping Traczyk on his campaign for a seat on the D200 Board of Education in April’s election.Â
“I can’t begin to tell you how many different issues we worked on together where two sides were in a heated dispute and Peter would help them come to some middle ground,” he said.
As if guided by Peter’s spirit of getting things done, after the ladies’ running group put the word out about the vigil, it seemed to form itself.Â
“We let people know to feel free to meet at 6 p.m., and to bring mason jars and candles,” said Poe.
Buchbinder got word of the Sunday night vigil from his wife. They, along with others throughout town, showed up in front of the Traczyk home on Scoville Avenue.Â
“There were a couple hundred people there,” said Buchbinder. “People were standing and there was sort of a solemn quiet about everything. We walked a little bit, lit candles, stood in silence and faced the house.”
“We basically lined the entire block and the walkway of the Traczyk home and the other side of the street,” Poe said.
For Lynch, silence is the only measure of the community’s shock. It was as if the community was mourning for itself just as much as for the man and his family.
“We are so shattered by this loss,” Lynch said. “It’s our community’s loss. It’s his family’s loss.”
CONTACT: michael@oakpark.comÂ