A Catholic deacon married Paul and Julie Hetherington, his girlfriend of almost three years, in the hospital boardroom May 16.

"He didn’t miss out on the stag or anything. It was just a little different than what it would have been," says his wife Julie Adam. Adam died four days later at age 34 of small-cell bone cancer. Although Julie says she knew he wasn’t getting better, Paul still planned on coming home to work on the house.

"I don’t think I ever saw defeat in his eyes," she says. "It was more the day he passed away that I think he realized there just wasn’t any more that could be done."

About 900 people came to his wake, and for the funeral nearly 500 filled Perth’s largest church, St. John’s Roman Catholic.

The outpouring is a testament to the impact Adam made wherever he went, says Jody Botham, who graduated Kemptville College with Paul in 1991. "He was well known and well liked by everyone that knew him. There wasn’t anyone I knew that didn’t like him. He was just an all-around super guy."

Paul’s friends want his caring spirit to live on through a memorial fund at Kemptville College. Adam is survived by parents Eric and Mary, as well as brother Terry and sisters Joan and Carole. The burly young dairy farmer, known by friends as Griz, loved social events and was involved with many community organizations such as 4-H, Perth Fair and Soil and Crop. He was also a provincial director with Junior Farmers and a volunteer firefighter. The fire department, says Julie, was like his second family, and his dedication to them superceded his sickness by far. Paul knew the area so well that the fire department relied heavily on him to get them to fires.

"Even when he was sick they radioed him because he knew all the roads," she says. "You’d hear him yelling on the radio, ‘you’re going the wrong way!’"

Paul Adam’s dedication to his community stemmed from pride in the area, and resonated with friends.

"He was proud of being from Lanark County," recalls college friend Ross Giles. "Every time he’d come down to visit he’d always bring a nice block of Balderson cheese."

Though Paul made friends wherever he went, he never lost old ones. He started an annual college reunion which his friends plan to continue in his honour as Grizfest.

"He loved social gatherings," says Giles. "His other love was farming, and he always loved to talk farming whether it was cattle, crops or machinery."

Farming on the 10th Concession between Perth and Lanark was always Paul’s dream. His mother Mary remembers Paul being scolded for not paying attention in school. His excuse for the teacher was that he was worried about his little calf in the barn.

But, says his father Eric, if Paul were ever a little boy it was only for a short time. "He was a man long before his years. Even when he was a kid he came home and went to work." As a result, his parents say, he was a good farmer who eagerly learned the family trade. He bought the family farm in 2001, but was forced to sell at an April 2 auction that attracted 400 people. Former Kemptville College business lecturer Robert Morrison spoke with Paul at the auction when his former student pulled into the yard in his SUV. Paul, once strapping and muscular, was thin and dying.

"He called me over," says Morrison. "It was one of the nicest conversations I’ve ever had with a student. He said that I gave him a lot of trouble at the college, but that he’s had 12 years to think about what we talked about."

He didn’t always agree with Morrison’s business approach to agriculture but told him that he had thought a lot about their discussions as he plowed and raked the fields and has "accepted some of the views as it fit in with his own system and point-of-view as they matured."

Paul Adam touched his friends and family in many ways, whether baking cherry cheesecakes for parties, bringing baby quilts to friends with newborns, or reminiscing over a rye and ginger, but they are touched most by his stoicism and thoughtfulness even when he was suffering from the cancer that would eventually take his life.

"Even when he was sick he would put his own illness behind him to check up on you," says Botham. "He would call me and check on how I was doing when something hard was going on in my life."