A former Leavenworth County commissioner, Leavenworth mayor and community activist died Sunday at age 69.

Robert L. “Bob” Adams, who served two consecutive terms on the County Commission from 1997 to 2005, as Leavenworth City commissioner from 1993 to 1997, as Leavenworth mayor in 1995 and 1996 and as a former Lansing-Leavenworth Area Chamber of Commerce president, leaves behind a lasting memory for many of the county residents he came in contact with through the years.

Former 3rd District County Commissioner Joe Daniels Jr., who sat next to Adams for four years, said Adams was “always very much looking out for the welfare of the county. He tried to serve in that vein.”

Daniels added that Adams was a big supporter of regionalism; he sat on the board of directors for the Mid-America Regional Council, an association of city and county governments for the bistate Kansas City region, and he represented the Board of County Commissioners as an ex-officio member of Leavenworth Area Development, the economic development engine now known as Leavenworth County Development Corp. and the Leavenworth County Port Authority.

“He was a strong supporter of everything we did,” current Port Authority chairman Terry Andrews said Tuesday. ” : He was very forward-thinking and had a vision that was way ahead of his time in many regards.”

Andrews added, “He was a good person. He always listened to both sides of an argument. I never once, as long as I knew him, saw him angry.”

Adams, who, for many years, ran an Amoco Service Station at Fourth and Limit streets in Leavenworth just like his father, Gilbert Adams, had done before him, took a job with Dodge before beginning work in local government in the 1990s.

He was also active as a member of the board of directors for Cushing Memorial Hospital and devoted a lot of time and effort to the Leavenworth County 4-H Club.

“He was such a wonderful human being and such a friend of 4-H,” Beth Hecht, a county extension agent, said of Adams. “He’s going to be very much missed.”

Hecht said, as a former 4-H member himself, Adams was instrumental during the years the county 4-H program served as a full-scale prevention program for the state’s Juvenile Justice Authority.

“He saw the difference it (4-H) can make in kids lives and in families’ lives, and he was such a believer in that,” Hecht added. ” : I have tremendous respect for the man as an individual.”

Services for Adams will be at 10 a.m. Thursday at the First Baptist Church, 13th and Osage streets, Leavenworth.