Statement on the death of Supervisor Larry Meyers

Here is a letter/statement I put together. Quite frankly, it helped me tonight a little to get through the loss of my colleague and friend.

Thanks,

Terrence Neuzil

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Today I lost a colleague and a friend. Larry Meyers, the Vice Chair of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors passed away after a long fight with cancer; he was 58. My heart and prayers go to his son and members of his family.

Larry Meyers was genuinely a nice guy. He was elected only a few years ago primarily as a one issue candidate; though I learned quickly that he cared about many more issues. That very controversial issue was his support of removing a road project, Newport Road that he felt would have a detrimental effect on his neighborhood in the North Corridor of our County. He joined me in that fight to stop the ill-conceived road project and it was his vote that removed it from the list of road appropriations. I remember the meeting in the first days of 2007 when he chimed in saying, “it’s time to address this 800-pound gorilla.” We did and his smile said it all. Of course I joked with him, something you could do with Larry. I said, “so you pretty much are done with your work on the Board of Supervisors now, right?” He shrugged, smiled and said, “I’m sure they’ll be a few more issues we can get through – hopefully a little easier than that one.” Larry’s passion was on growth and development issues and his work helped us all as we recently updated the County Land Use Plan. Infrastructure planning is now a higher priority because of Larry. Larry was very approachable, a good listener and I enjoyed our early Tuesday morning meetings as he served as my Vice Chair. It was amazing that he rarely missed any meeting – even hours or days having to go through all that chemo for the past year and a half. In fact I talked to him just this past Thursday – he couldn’t make the meeting because the cancer was stealing his body, but he still called me on my cell phone getting an update on the Sutliff Bridge issue. We all will miss Larry Meyers. I’m so sad that I didn’t get to play that game of golf we promised each other.