Assemblyman Frank Skartados received a hero's tribute on Thursday during the first of three viewings for the assemblyman who passed away at age 62 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

"He doesn't change. He is who he is, and his heart is for everybody," said Skartados' community outreach coordinator Christopher Whitson as he took a quick break from ushering in the many guests here at DiDonato Funeral Services in Marlboro. "I'm OK. It was a hard loss, because I've personally known him for 21 years."

Whitson met Skartados in 1997, when he was a patron at Skartados' Poughkeepsie nightclub, "Confetti's."

Whitson said Skartados' asked him to take photos for the club's website, a forward-thinking but uncommon task in the late 1990s. From that point forward, Whitson worked for Skartados in several capacities, until what has become his final job for Skartados, as community outreach coordinator.

Whitson said he learned through the years by seeing his now-former boss fight for immigrants, the environment and projects that connect communities, such as the Walkway Over The Hudson, a project in which Skartados lobbying efforts were instrumental.

As sad as the viewing was, it was also celebratory.

"It is an honor to see the number of people whose lives he has touched," Whitson said, fighting back tears. "His heart is shared through the community."

Mayors, administrators and colleagues from the statehouse said they admired Skartados for his work ethic.

Skartados came to New York from the Greek island of Astypalaia, paid his way through college and opened a restaurant, beginning his own version of the American dream.

It was a dream that also included a farm in Milton with goats and sheep. The dream would soon lead Skartados to public service.

"He was a hardworking, honest man," recalled Alison MacAvery, who worked closely and often with Skartados toward the end of her 10-year run as a Dutchess County legislator. "Those in the neighborhoods he worked for knew that."

"We were always on the same page," Poughkeepsie Mayor Rob Rolison said. "It was always about what we could do to help Poughkeepsie. That's what made him -- in my mind -- so very special."

Just as we were finishing our interview with Christopher Whitson, we asked if his mentor inspired him to also run for a policy-shaping position in Albany.

"That might be something in the future," Whitson said. "But right at this immediate moment, I couldn't consider it in the honor of his memory."

While researching for this story on Thursday, Spectrum News found a video package including parts of an interview Skartados had done with Ulster BOCES, in which he spoke passionately and urgently about the need for programs to help young people from his district acquire technical skills that might help the environment and local economy.

"You're securing your future by knowing something technical, by knowing how to install something, by knowing how to repair something or knowing how to recycle something," he said in the Feb. 10, 2015, video. "Sustainability is the moral imperative of our time."