I'm lucky I knew Greg Freeman.Greg was a journalist born and reared in St. Louis, a Midwestern town like Cincinnati in so many ways. Greg wrote about its struggles, its people, its neuroses. They all seem so familiar to Cincinnati's.

Both towns are struggling to become America's Next Great City. Both don't have a handle yet on race, gender, economic or social justice.

But both towns show a lot of potential.

Over the past 10 years, Greg has cajoled, chided, inspired and sympathized with those trying to make St. Louis better. A newspaper columnist and a regular TV and radio figure, he gently and sometimes not so gently prodded his audience to consider issues from another person's perspective.

Spotlight on people

One of his best columns was about a father whose daughter was murdered who eventually met the father of the murderer. That meeting changed the father's heart and Greg's mind about vengeance and the death penalty.

Greg wrote calmly and reasonably about St. Louis' frantic efforts to resuscitate its flagging downtown. He urged city leaders to preserve its historic heritage. He pushed them to pay attention to neglected neighborhoods, not just the gems.

Greg spotlighted people with disabilities and compelled readers to designate themselves organ and tissue donors.

Then when Greg fell ill last year and needed a kidney, thousands of readers shared his struggle to live, his fears that he wouldn't find a kidney in time, and his grateful relief when his sister's donated kidney saved his life.

Frank talk

Greg wasn't just a writer, he was a doer. An African-American married to a white woman, Greg joined or founded community efforts to improve race relations.

A column he wrote nine years ago led to creation of Bridges Across Racial Polarization, a network bringing people together for dinner and frank talk. Last year, the Pew Charitable Trust designated it a "Solution for America," one of 19 programs so honored. Three years ago, the President's Initiative on Race named it a "promising practice" for the nation.

It's just people of various races, incomes and cultural strata sharing some meals. But it was, and still is, a quiet revolution in a town where most people are judged by the high school they attended.

Because Greg was black and wrote about race, he received some of the most vitriolic hate mail I've ever read.

Yet I never heard him say an unkind word. He responded to most readers' letters, e-mails or phone calls.

Never complained

Greg helped lead or support dozens of community organizations, sometimes just by using his name, voice, image, brain power, star power and sometimes his last strength. The man had a breakfast-meeting-luncheon-speaking-dinner-presentation-youth-mentoring schedule that could kick a workhorse's behind. (Greg didn't cuss much.)

But Greg never complained when he was tired or in pain. In recent months, he tried to keep it low-key, but it was becoming hard for him to stand for long periods of time, then for short periods of time, then to stand at all. When getting into his car, he'd use his hands to drag his feet in, one ankle at a time.

Last year, he was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. It put him a wheelchair. He worried that it slowed him down. He hated disappointing people.

Greg was upbeat 99 percent of the time. He was a role model and mentor to a reporter-turned-editor-turned-columnist who eventually moved to Cincinnati.

Greg Freeman died Tuesday morning. He was 46.

E-mail damos@enquirer.com or phone 768-8395.