I admired and enjoyed Greg Palmer long before I met him. He did funny features on KING TV and, back in the days when I watched TV, Greg was one of my favorites (check out The Best of Greg Palmer). My respect and admiration for him grew immensely when I met him in our store after the publication of his book, Adventures in the Mainstream: Coming of Age With Down Syndrome, a book about the experiences of his son Ned and his challenges and adjustments when he completed high school. Ned is a remarkable human being and Greg, as revealed both in the book and in person, interacting with his son, was a wonderful father. The book is now, unfortunately, out of print. More recently Greg published a memoir of growing up on Mercer Island and working as a short order cook, Cheese Deluxe. It's a wonderfully warm and hilariously funny book of the mid-60's. He graduated from high school in 1965, as did I, and, though we grew up nearly 2000 miles apart, we might well have lived in the same neighborhood during the last innocent era. Greg died this morning of lung cancer. Though I didn't know him well, I will miss him and, the world will miss a great talent and wonderful human being.
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