NORTH LIBERTY — Friends and relatives traveled here to pack up Andy Pavlovec's belongings Wednesday. While doing so, they unpacked three decades' worth of warm memories of him.
There were the high school years at Turkey Valley, when Pavlovec was a class cutup, once wearing the same shirt five days in a row to show what he thought of the peer pressure to be fashionable.
There was a bicycle ride across the state that saw Pavlovec and his childhood buddy repeatedly being separated, only to have a hug-filled reunion in the evenings.
And there was the knowledge that Pavlovec's organs were bound to provide life for some strangers. Pavlovec was a firm believer in recycling. His parents and three brothers found that to be a fitting footnote to his life.