Each year the calendar turns at this time and we remember some absent friends who’ve been left behind. Maybe a better way to phrase it is they’ve gone ahead.

In February it was college friend Scott Hollis, 56, and Ricky Lennard, 61, who perished one February morning in a plane crash in Shreveport. Ricky was an all-time great Little League dad who 20 years ago loaned me one of his boys, Alan, who became a fearless Oriole at age 10 and is now a Navy Seal. We tried to have as much fun in Little League as possible — learn how to spit sunflower seeds, spend time practicing sliding through a giant mud puddle — because, sooner or later, real life happens. Sometimes there’s rain at the parade.

Dan Jenkins, 90, passed away in March in his Fort Worth hometown after a career that you’d have to file in the Remarkable Department; the Most Influential Sportswriter of the 20th Century is a good place to start. Novelist. Screenwriter. Husband. Dad to three. Friend to many.

I got to know him for a little while and loved to hear him talk of golf and musicals and food and football, or “foobaw,” as he often typed it. And family. He loved talking about his family and friends. He brought the world a lot of laughter and made sure country club games like golf didn’t take themselves too seriously. You can never have too much of what Dan Jenkins amplified in this world.

In July we lost another sportswriter. Orville Kince “Buddy” Davis died at 72 from complications of a stroke suffered six years earlier. For 50 years he toted the mail for the Ruston Daily Leader as its executive sports editor, photographer, writer, and man about town. Before he started keeping numbers in his cell phone, he owned a Rolodex the size of a Volkswagen. He became less and less mobile through the years but kept writing from his bed until the end, and he kept welcoming friend after All-Pro after Hall of Famer to his suite for visits.

When he first had the stroke and hadn’t gained enough mobility to use his phone yet, me and a couple of other friends would take turns going by each day to read and respond to his text messages for him. One day the first three messages were from Terry Bradshaw, Doug Williams, and Archie Manning. A Monsters of the Midway type deal.

Everyone misses O.K. Buddy.

In mid-November, former sportswriter and public relations stud Jerre Todd of Arlington, Texas died at 87. I was only around him a couple of times but he was one of Dan Jenkins’ best friends for 70 years and his wife is one of the best and most beautiful people you could know. Team Jenkins and Team Todd have been the center of a special group of friends for such a long time; it’s heart-hurting when that much wit and laughter leaves the building. I always smile when I think of Mr. Todd because he’s the center of one of my favorite stories.

In real life when they were young men, unattached, prior to meeting their forever wives (or “between movies”) and sharing a crummy apartment, Dan told Jerre to go to the Fort Worth paper and interview for the baseball beat opening with sports editor extraordinaire Blackie Sherrod, who was in the process of building one of the most star-studded sports staffs in the history of ball at the Fort Worth Press. Jerre came to the newsroom, Dan pointed out Sherrod editing a story, and Jerre ran across the newsroom and did a hook-slide into Sherrod’s desk. Sherrod looked down at him, said “You’re hired!,” and went back to work.

Beautiful.

Finally, our friend Carley McCord, a south Louisiana-based reporter and broadcaster who has helped the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame a good bit and in valuable ways the past few years, was one of five who died in the Lafayette small plane crash last week. She was only 30. The phone call about that one made you just want to throw up; no other way to say it. A person so young and that hard-working. And willing to work. Married less than two years. It’s a brutal reminder that we aren’t built for life down here.

So if for no other reason than to honor these lives that left us so much laughter and offered us so much entertainment, be nice to somebody today. Maybe we can start something and make 2020 our best year yet.

We’ll meet again …

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