UPDATE: Harrison Freer will be remembered

Queensbury Town Board member was stricken while cycling in Bolton

Please consider supporting The Front Page with a paid subscription: HERE

What was obvious to us on The Post-Star editorial board in 2013 was that Harrison Freer was not your usual Town Board candidate.

He graduated from the Air Force Academy and served 24 years while flying combat missions in the Middle East. When he was done with that he did two tours of duty at the Pentagon, then a stint in the private sector with Boeing. He might have mentioned something about a classified satellite program, too.

Despite all that, Ward 2 voters elected Brian Clements that year. Clements was eventually voted out of office four years later after being involved in a partisan email scandal in the Town of Queensbury.

But Freer tried again in 2019.

"When you are done listening to Harrison Freer's resume, you are exhausted," the editorial board wrote while endorsing Freer that fall. "Ward 2 residents should not let him slip away a second time."

They didn't.

Freer died this past week when he suffered what his riding partner JP Fasano believes to be a heart attack while cycling in Bolton. Fasano corrected my early version of the story where I said Freer had been “killed.”

Fasano wrote that he attempted CPR after Freer was stricken, but was unable to contact emergency services because there was no cell phone reception. When a car finally came by, the driver went to a nearby house to call 9-1-1.

Freer, 70, was an active cyclist.

Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.