Raise the bar, leave out the obscenities, vulgarities

With the passing of George Parker, Columbia, Boone County, Missouri and America are markedly poorer. We lost yet another member of the greatest generation (a bomber pilot who flew missions over Utah Beach on D-Day), a politician respected by all for his honesty and integrity; one who valued civil discourse as much as he rejected discourtesy and vulgarity; a man who believed in America, the two-party political system and in every citizens’ duty to participate in government; and I lost a friend.