Our lives seem very rarely made easy for us. Such was certainly the case for our friend Rudy Freitag, who passed on July 10 after a long period of multiple illnesses. But it is not his suffering that we remember him for now, but his continued commitment to service while enduring through that suffering. Young families and their school aged children may not know that for years it was Rudy Freitag, the retired engineer, who tramped through the worksites of the new middle school and the high school additions, making sure that things were right, that the citizens were getting what they were paying for, that the children and teachers would have the proper buildings they needed to do their work. Newcomers may not know of the years he dedicated to overseeing the town's budget, a fiscal watchdog with an often misunderstood gruff exterior that masked a heart of tremendous depth and charity. People outside his church may not know the depth of his faith and how it moved him, indeed, as he would tell you himself, how it saved him. But there are enough people still around who know these things, and know that this town will miss the likes of Rudy Freitag, a man who understood suffering, a man who earned redemption, a man who lived in faith. May God rest him.