ROCKFORD Tom Wartowski was a journalist, photographer, businessman, political activist, children s book author, homebuilder and prosecutor. But to those who knew and loved him, he was even more than that.
Wartowski, 73, died Thursday after a 20-year battle with lung cancer. His wife, Peg, and son, David, were by his side.
A few days before his death, David had found in Wartowski s office a decades-old note from Wartowski s mother written for his eighth-grade graduation some 60 years ago. The handwritten note on yellowed paper reminded a young Wartowski whose family had fled Soviet Union-occupied Poland and immigrated to the United States in 1951 of St. Francis teaching that it is in the giving that we receive.