About 250 people filled the biggest room at The Hall at Fauntleroy this afternoon to celebrate the life of Ron Richardson, the historian/retired teacher/political activist (and so much more) whose cancer battle ended earlier this month at age 75.

“Continue on,” he had exhorted his daughter Carrie Lynn Richardson in a recent note, she recalled. Continue on, life did – with every chair filled, and dozens standing around the edges of the room, even as snow fell intermittently outside, and orcas swam by just off the Fauntleroy shore. Ron’s son Dan Richardson looked out over the crowd from the front of the room as the memorial began, and marveled, “Unbelievable.”

The man known for honoring the fact that everyone had a story to tell was paid tribute with a multitude of stories, from not only family members, but also from former colleagues from his years as a schoolteacher and sports coach, and from his former fellow board member at the Southwest Seattle Historical Society, Judy Bentley, who observed of Ron’s involvement with so many of its endeavors, from preservation campaigns to walking tours: “He just kept showing up.”

Ron’s own history yielded tales of all manner of achievements, from his multiple road trips during his son and daughter’s childhood – Carrie Lynn said she had been to all 48 continental states by the time she was 15, before she ever took a plane trip – to his 1970s work to get a school built in the jungles of Ecuador.

Speaking again at the end of the memorial’s formal program, her brother Dan recalled their father as a “hero” for keeping a positive attitude during his 16-month fight against the disease that ended his life. It was clearly not just a chin-up positive attitude, but one even with humor, as a Steve Goodman recording was played before those in attendance were invited to share food and stories with each other (and in composition books around the room), the classic “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request.”

Then there was an unspoken tribute few might have noticed – revealed by the presence of this car in the parking lot behind The Hall:

We heard Spc. Dickison’s story from Ron the first time we met him, almost three years ago. The famous sign in his front yard (which we had first noticed a year earlier), charting the tolls of the ongoing war in the Middle East, picked up a new number, in honor of Pfc. Dickison, after his mother knocked on the front door one day. After meeting him, we published Ron’s story about that in May 2008.

To that point, a eulogizer today noted that Ron’s many qualities included embodiment of Joseph Campbell’s exhortation to “Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.” Those who gathered to remember him today, amid that particular sorrow, were invited to participate joyfully in the celebration as well.