GUILDERLAND — Walter E. Cieszynski was a lifelong hunter. And, despite being weak from a 34-year battle with cancer, he went hunting one last time this fall. “He didn’t go far from the house. I was worried, and he gave me a time he’d be back,” said his wife. “He got a big deer.”

KNOX — “You name it and my father probably drove it.”

Denise Peister said this in remembering her father, Peter Leslie Kolanchick, who died on Monday, Nov. 21, 2016, just one week after his 62nd birthday.

GUILDERLAND — A hardworking man who put his family first, Charles “Jack” A. Jack Jr., retired at the age of 79.

An Army veteran, he worked in his family’s restaurant for 40 years, ran a pool business with his brother for a decade, and then worked as a trucker for another two decades.

WRIGHT — Richard E. Ogsbury was a tough man who rose to meet challenges.

“There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do,” said his wife, Florence Ogsbury. “He was a jack of all trades. He always liked a challenge. He had to prove to people he could do it.”

BERNE — To get a vivid sense of the person Whilma Helen Wolford Willsey was, you need only  read the recollections of her early life, assembled by her daughter Winifred in 2010 into one remarkable document.  It is personal history at its richest and best, calling to life  a vanished world that fewer and fewer people can now remember.

EAST BERNE — Donna Jeanine Filkins — who, as a bartender, served “everyone from lawyers to outlaws,” her sister said — “accepted everybody for who they were.”

Her sister, Connie Filkins, went on, “She saw the best in people; she trusted people.”

NEW SCOTLAND — Though she lived most of her life outside this area, her birth-family name and all the local memories attached to it made Marilyn Osterhout Reynolds a person whose local roots ran deep.

BRUNSWICK — George J. Casavant, a teamster who drove all over the Capital Region, died peacefully at home on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016, surrounded by his loving family. He was 84.

KNOX — Donna Heath of Knox was a strong and caring woman. She loved the children who rode the school buses she drove, and she made afghans for people in need.

She died unexpectedly on Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2016, at the Gloversville Nursing Home.  She was 72.

GUILDERLAND — Patricia Belle Miller, described by her family as a loving wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, died peacefully on Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2016. She was 92.

“She will be missed dearly by her family,” her family wrote in a tribute.