We have more than a passing interest, of course, in Christopher Gartner Memorial Park in west Ames. We stopped by, throughout the fall, and watched the children playing on the little playground or romping on the two acres of lawn. We smiled when we saw a mother or father with a youngster - pushing a swing, perhaps, or tossing a ball, or just sitting and watching. We grinned, especially, the day we saw a little boy with a big dog, each watching out for the other. We laughed out loud when we saw two little boys getting into harmless mischief.

The park, just a few months old, is already serving its purpose, we thought.

That purpose is to provide joy unbounded - joy for little kids, joy for their parents, joy for their dogs.

For Christopher Carl Gartner was the most joyous boy that ever lived.

He was born grinning, and the grin only got bigger as he grew - and grew and grew and grew. He laughed at everything - when he was little, at his grandpa's wild stories; when he was bigger, at his pals' wild escapades. By the time he was 15, he was an exuberant story-teller, regaling his pals with the latest funny thing his friend Andrew said, the latest crazy thing his friend Joey did. His grin and his laughter were infectious. Life for him was fun, and he wanted his friends and his mom and his dad and his grandparents to have fun, too. (He was genuinely kind, as well as cheerful, and early on he figured out that was an advantage. "You know," he once clued in his little brother, "if you're nice to your teachers you don't have to study nearly as hard," something he liked because being nice was a lot easier for him than studying.)

Life for him was love, too. By his early teens, he was a bear of a boy, probably six-feet three-inches or so, and he would almost have to bend over double to kiss his tiny grandma, whom he stopped by to see almost every day. But he never had that reticence or shyness that boys sometimes develop. He was an unabashed hugger from the day he was born in 1976 till the day he died in 1994. His last words to his father, as he lay in the hospital early in the morning of the summer day he died so suddenly and unexpectedly, were, "I love you too, dad."

We tell you this today, with more joy than sadness, for a couple of reasons. The first is just a technical one. The deed to the park was turned over to the city the other evening, so Christopher Gartner Memorial Park is now an official city park, and we just thought we'd tell you a bit about the boy the park is named after. (We could tell you much more - about how he goofily learned to walk with the help of a big unruly dog, who cushioned every fall; about how he drove his mother's new convertible into a tree the very day he got his driver's license - it was the tree's fault, he laughingly argued; about how he's wake his parents at midnight to report in - and then tell them funny stories of what happened at the game or the party or wherever he'd been. All those or the million other happy memories that vie for space against the grieving a hundred times a day.)

The second reason we tell all this is because this is the Christmas season, the time of joy and of families and of fun and of love. We thought there was no better way to wish you a merry Christmas than to tell you the story of a boy who embodied laughter and love and giving, a boy who brought so much joy to so many people in just 17 years.

Our purpose surely is evident: to urge you to have fun this holiday season with your kids or your parents - or both. To urge you to sit around and tell family stories as two or three or sometimes four generations gather at the table - to share in the laughter. And to urge you to tell one another, the young and the old and the very old, that your family is a pretty nice family - to share in the love.

Finally, if it's a nice day tomorrow, you might want to wander over to Christopher Gartner Park - it's tucked away at the dead end of Abraham Drive - and toss a ball around or romp with a dog or push a swing. And think nice thoughts about the cheerful boy who has lent it his name.

It's too bad you never knew him.

You'd have loved his laugh.

You'd have loved him.