Many of Central Iowa’s most successful business people and strongest community leaders started with nothing, and that’s still our favorite American story — the hardscrabble kid who overcomes all obstacles and climbs to the top.

At the same time, we like to savor our resentment of those at the opposite end of the spectrum, the people born to wealth and privilege who spend their lives flaunting it and not accomplishing much of anything.

Then there was David Kruidenier. He didn’t fit into either category.

He was born into a successful family, and his career got off to a brisk start as the family’s prominence grew. However, the beauty of his life isn’t what he had, but what he did.

Rather than coasting along, Kruidenier went to work and never stopped. Rather than trying to please his important friends, he let the reporters and editors of The Des Moines Register and Tribune do their work and get under the skin of every big shot he knew.

Rather than insinuating himself into large national issues, the Des Moines native looked around his hometown and focused on things that needed improvement or were missing entirely. Now you see the imprint of David Kruidenier everywhere.

He chose to put time, persuasion and his own money into the Des Moines Art Center, the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines, the Simon Estes Amphitheater, the Forest Avenue branch of the Public Library of Des Moines, the Des Moines Symphony and Gray’s Lake Park.

If none of those cultural and recreational amenities have enriched your life lately, you need to get out more.

In his final years, he waded into one last battle over the reshaping of downtown, the debate over the AIB building that sat beside the Temple for Performing Arts. It wasn’t unusual for him to run into controversy. He won the fight. Also not unusual.

In a 2003 interview, Kruidenier told the Des Moines Business Record that his city “can’t decide whether it’s a big country town or an urban metro. I think it’s in transition, and some awfully good things are about to happen.”

The past two years have certainly supported that prediction. Then one bad thing interrupted the streak last week when Kruidenier passed away. He was 84 years old, the beneficiary of a good, long life.

As he talked about his interests and efforts in that ’03 interview, Kruidenier said of the formerly neglected Gray’s Lake, “Most cities would give anything to have that.”

Most cities would give anything to have a David Kruidenier, too.