When a community loses one of its top leaders, the pain of that loss is felt by everyone.

This is the case with the death Friday of Landman “Landy” Teller, a prominent attorney and a man who loved his hometown so much he did everything he could to help it succeed.

The civic and community organizations to which he was a member are too numerous to list in the space we have here, but Teller was more than a person who joined organizations to support Vicksburg. He was a man of integrity whose abilities were recognized by his peers and friends and he was remembered as someone who was always in a good mood and was well-liked by anyone he came in contact with.

“They just don’t make them any better than Landy Teller,” longtime friend and former law partner Brother Blackburn said. “He was good to the core and a very, very loyal friend and a loyal person. Everybody loved Landy. He always had a smile on his face. I can’t ever remember Landy being in a bad mood. He was always happy and always that positive person that everybody loved to be around.”

“When you hear the Teller name, it’s always spoken with dignity,” businessman Charles Riles said. “He built his reputation on his integrity. A great legal mind is gone.

People like Landy Teller are hard to replace because of the way they influenced the community — not by being loud and brash, but by slowly, quietly and behind the scenes helping people find their way, encouraging others to get involved and help their community be their own example.

“He’s going to be sorely missed by his family and all of us at the law firm,” said State Sen. Briggs Hopson III, who was a partner in Teller’s firm, Teller Hassell & Hopson. “He was a great leader, he was a giant as a person and as a law partner. Landy’s an example by which all of us should live. He was kind, thoughtful, encouraging, friendly to everyone, fair, and just an outstanding person. It’s a tremendous loss.”

And he leaves some very large shoes to fill.