Tim Ward remembers when he first saw Jeff Kidwell. It was at a Tennessee Building Officials Association meeting in the late 1980s, and the friendly, buzz-top Kidwell had just started working as Building Inspector for the Town of Farragut, not too far from his native West Knoxville.

“He was a young man … but he didn’t want to appear to be rookie,” said Ward, retired Oak Ridge Community Development Official and the 2011 Bobby J. Fowler Award recipient. “I kind of took him under my wing and showed him the ropes.”

Ward can’t believe that his longtime friend and code pupil is gone, felled December 2 at the age of 48 by a longtime battle with cancer. Ward had seen him only two days before. “He’s going to be missed.”

Missed by many, said Oak Ridge Building Official Denny Boss, also a longtime friend.

“His memorial service started at 5 p.m., and I got there around 5:05,” Boss said. “People already were lined up outside to get in to the chapel. They were lined up outside, two and three deep. He had a lot of friends, from all walks of life.”

That is because Kidwell touched so many people in so many different areas. He was born in Knoxville and attended Bearden Knoxville High school, graduating in 1982. Kidwell joined the Army Reserves in 1983 and married Connie in 1985.

He did some contracting work, and then moved on to Farragut. A few years later, Kidwell became Building Official in nearby Clinton, Tennessee. During his time in Clinton, Kidwell, already heavily involved with the TBOA, helped set up the first International Code Council national conference in Nashville.

Terry Cobb, Director of Codes and Building Safety for the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, and former ICC Board Director, remembers Kidwell throwing himself into the arrangements for that conference. “He was part of a small group of people on the host committee who were charged with getting it done, and they got it done well,” Cobb said.

But he already had seen Kidwell devote himself to making the TBOA annual meetings in nearby Knoxville complete successes. For his devotion to the TBOA, Kidwell, who served as president in 2004-2004, was named TBOA Code Official of the Year in 2004.

“Jeff was very typical of ICC membership,” Cobb said. “Most come from small cities. And he also was a volunteer firefighter in Clinton. He was a jack-of-all-trades. And he always had a big smile on his face.”

Ward remembers Kidwell as a very competent code official, but he and others also remember him as a devoted husband to wife Connie and father to sons Brice, Brad and Blake.

“We talked about family all the time,” Cobb said. “We both had kids involved in baseball, and they were doing pretty darned well. We could sit and talk for an hour about those things.”

Ward said Kidwell’s children saw him so many times at youth baseball games that they referred to him as “Uncle Tim.”

“He would call me and tell me he was going to be in Oak Ridge for a baseball game,” Ward said. “He would invite me to come and watch.”

Kidwell loved sports, his friends remembered. As well as coaching baseball, he officiated junior high and high school football games, and was an avid golfer, even participating on the TBOA’s annual Scholarship Golf Scholarship Tournament Committee when he was ill.

“He wanted to stay involved with his friends,” Boss said. But all three friends found it difficult to pinpoint exactly when Kidwell became ill, because he just didn’t talk much about it.

“I never heard Jeff complain or feel sorry for himself,” Boss said. “He just played the hand he was dealt.”

One report pinned the date to April 17, 2006. That day, he felt a horrible pain in his back. When it was worse the next day, he went to the local emergency room. A CT scan showed he had kidney cancer, a rare and often fatal disease. He was 42.

Ward said Kidwell told him about the cancer, but when it came to how bad it was, “I’m not sure he leveled with me. But I figured when he was going to Vanderbilt (for experimental treatment) instead of a local treatment, something must have been up.”

It sure wasn’t for football. Those dozens of people who stood in line for Kidwell’s memorial? Many of them were wearing orange in honor of Kidwell’s devotion to the University of Tennessee.

The day of Kidwell’s memorial, Boss said, he was trying to figure out what to wear to work. He opted for navy blue vest with “Tennessee Building Officials Association” in orange script.

“Then I saw his obituary in the paper where it asked people to wear University of Tennessee colors,” Boss said. “I had the colors, and I felt the TBOA vest was appropriate since that’s how we met.”

Boss misses his friend, but Kidwell’s passing still is bittersweet.

“Jeff had a couple of bad relapses, maybe six or eight months ago” he said. “You never want to lose a loved one, but you have to realize when it’s time to let go. Now there’s no more pain and suffering.”