David Afflick loved going to his best friend Ethan King’s house growing up: It had the pool, plus one of the first Macintosh computers.

But it also had Gerri King, who was like a second mother to Afflick. Whenever he had a tough time at home, Gerri was his “safe haven.”

“Gerri was just unconditional love, personified unconditional love,” Afflick said.

Afflick and a dozen of the King family’s closest friends gathered at their house in Concord to talk about the lasting impact Gerri had on their lives. She died on Feb. 16 after a brief battle with cancer.

She was energetic, engaging and passionate about everything she did. She was a loving wife and mother, a caring friend and a builder of community, they said.

She also loved movies, so much so that she kept a database of every movie she’d seen, who had recommended it and other movies that were coming up.

“You couldn’t go to the movies with her, because she’d seen everything,” said her friend Laura Knoy, laughing. “It’s hard to imagine a movie that she wasn’t willing to see.”

Her husband, Ron King, and a house full of friends gathered in her memory to watch the Oscars last weekend. The awards show was like her Super Bowl – a “national holiday,” Ron said.

At age 82, Gerri never lost her zest for life and she never wanted to be treated differently as she got older – a fact she’d often remind her doctors of in her final weeks, said her friend Jane Skoog, a retired oncology nurse who helped the Kings navigate Gerri’s diagnosis and treatment.

Ron and Gerri met 63 years ago and were married for 60 – a love story that friends looked up to as a “fairytale,” they said.

Ron, a student at Cornell University in the 1960s, met her at a summer theater camp where they were both counselors. Gerri was a student at the University of Connecticut at the time.

“Before all the kids got there, we had our little group meetings … and afterwards, Gerri turned to me and said, ‘You know, we’re going to put on fabulous shows, but we’re not going to get along,’” Ron said. “I may not have been the most charming person back then, but … we just started talking.”

Ron later asked Gerri what she saw in him in the early days. “Potential,” he told the group as they erupted in laughter.

Gerri was energetic, Ron said. She worked full-time as a social psychologist, running her counseling and consulting firm, Human Dynamics Associates, in which she helped workplaces develop leadership and conflict resolution skills.

Outside of that, Gerri was involved with more boards, volunteer organizations and causes than Ron could recite. She served on the board of a local counseling center, Womankind, for more than 40 years. She was heavily involved with local theater, political advocacy and Concord’s Capitol Center for the Arts. She served as one of the inaugural members of the Monitor’s Reader Advisory Board.

She helped start Concord Hospital’s Lend Me a Hand Fund, which provides financial support to cancer patients.

Skoog said she had a patient in 2004 who tried to return a prescription because she had to choose between her medicine and feeding her family that week.

Skoog and her husband were sitting outside a cafe downtown the next day, wondering what to do about it, when Gerri walked by. They waved her down, and Gerri insisted that she only had five minutes to spare.

“An hour and a half later, we’re still sitting there,” Skoog said, met with laughter from the room. A few weeks later, they’d formed a group called Performers Who Care to raise money and established the hospital fund.

That’s who Gerri was, her friends and family said – someone who dropped everything for you. Someone who checked in on you, who never forgot your birthday, who loved to tell stories. She built connections everywhere she went.

Harriet Fishman, who met Gerri and Ron four years ago, said if she had to choose a word to describe Gerri, it’d be “community.”

“She was a gatherer, and it was clear from the beginning that she loved her family with an intensity that was lovely,” Fishman said. “Her passion for life was unending, and she wanted her friends to know her other friends, and she wanted them to make a connection.”

Words like classy, graceful and never judgmental defined who Gerri was.

“The only flaw Gerri King had is that she had no flaws,” Knoy said. “She was unfailingly kind. She was beautiful. She looked better in pants than anybody 30 years younger. I mean, she’s 80 years old, and she’s wearing leather pants – and she looked damn good.”

She always dressed intentionally, Ron said, and ironed everything – even jeans and t-shirts. Then, when she’d get ready for work or to go out, she’d go through her closet and think about who she was meeting.

“She’d say, ‘But this group is having a tough time, so I need to wear something that’s pink. Pink seems to be a calming thing, so I’ll wear something pink,’” Ron said. “She was that thoughtful about everything she put on.”

Gerri had a passion for theater and dance, and she choreographed shows for her local temple and theater groups. She also cared deeply about politics, having been involved in the Concord advocacy group, the Kent Street Coalition, since its founding. She was especially passionate about reproductive freedom, caring for the environment, mental health advocacy and children’s issues.

The Kings’ house was also a quintessential campaign stop for Democratic presidential hopefuls. Photos with the candidates they’ve met sprawl the walls of their foyer: the Obamas, Joe Biden, Howard Dean, Bill Clinton, Pete Buttigieg and other national candidates, as well as local Congress members, like Annie Kuster.

“Not just her passion for politics, but she opened her house so we all got to meet these people,” said friend Janice Dutton. “We got to meet all these presidential candidates, shook their hands, got to hear what they really thought in person, and she and Ron are the ones that made that happen.”

They’d move the furniture out of the living room to accommodate up to 120 people. It got to a point where the Kings didn’t even have to seek out the candidates.

“We haven’t called them. They call us,” Gerri told MSNBC in an interview she did with Ron in 2020.

Ron loved watching her shine at those parties.

“She could introduce anyone. It didn’t matter who they were … She was never intimidated, loved public speaking, loved just sort of sharing with anybody, anything,” Ron said. “She would introduce Martin Sheen or Barack Obama or Cory Booker or whoever, just off the top of her head. I’m looking up there, saying, ‘Who is this woman? She’s my wife.’”

Through all her advocacy, community involvement, and a job that she loved, those closest to Gerri remembered her as someone who brought people together and who was always reaching out to her friends.

“She’s one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known,” said Peggy Plass, who met Gerri in grad school decades ago. They’d been friends ever since. “Honestly, it’s hard to imagine the world is continuing to spin without her.”

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.