After years of battling a number of health conditions, our friend Norman Filzman passed away peacefully on Monday, July 5, in Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn. He had no remaining family, so a group of his old friends are raising $6,000 to pay for a cremation and to purchase a niche in historic Green-Wood Cemetery for the inurnment of his remains. With this as his final resting place he'll be close to his beloved Brooklyn neighborhood where he lived for at least 40 or more years.

This is how the funds raised will be used:

• $2,700 to pay for the services of a funeral director and cremation
• $3,100, plus taxes, for the niche.

Please, give what you can to help us honor The Commissioner (the nickname he was given for organizing an annual softball game in Prospect Park) and all that he's meant to so many people in the Park Slope community and among his book-seller and publishing friends and colleagues.