Artist and Route 66 legend Bob Waldmire dead

SPRINGFIELD -- Springfield-area artist and Route 66 legend Bob Waldmire has died at age 64 after a long struggle with abdominal cancer.

Friends and family said Waldmire died peacefully in his sleep Wednesday morning.

For some months, Waldmire had been living near Rochester in a converted school bus he used as a home while in central Illinois.

Waldmire said he had known he had cancer for nearly a decade, but he refused any invasive procedures that would have prolonged his life if it did it so at the expense of his philosophy of a simple and natural life.

He spent much of this fall in the bus, lying on a couch and talking with old friends. Many of them were his fellow Route 66 devotees who came from hundreds of miles away.