By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL/Designated Writers

At some point, I’d like to go back and check the books at the Ruston Daily Leader and see what the travel budget was in the 1970s and ’80s. It seemed like the paper’s sports editor — excuse me, “Executive Sports Editor” — went everywhere.

Buddy Davis went to the Olympics.

Buddy Davis went to Madison Square Garden.

Buddy Davis went to faraway NFL stadiums just to cover Lincoln Parish sports heroes.

The Daily Leader might have been (and still is) a small town paper, but that didn’t stop it from extending the boundaries way beyond Lincoln Parish.

Which is why the love for O.K. “Buddy” Davis is being returned from way beyond the circulation of the Daily Leader. After a six-year battle from the effects of a stroke, he passed away last week. For the sports writing community, it was a big loss because everybody loved and respected Buddy. But it was a bigger loss for the North Louisiana sports world … and beyond.

Think about some of the great athletes to come out of Louisiana Tech and Grambling. Buddy covered them all. But he didn’t just write about them; he became a friend to them all. The bigger they are — we’re talking Hall of Famers — the more likely they were to want to talk to Buddy.

Being a sports writer for a small town paper has always been more than just reporting Little League scores and track and field results. (In fact, with the changing face of the newspaper industry, it’s actually one of the best sports writing jobs you can have for those who want to do things “like they used to.”)

You become a part of the community and the community becomes a part of you. There has been no better example of that in this state — and perhaps the country — than Buddy Davis.

I worked for the Ruston Daily Leader for two years when I was in college at Louisiana Tech. First assignment? Do a story on the Ruston High football team and then cover a Cedar Creek game. Every week, I’d show up on Monday and Buddy would give me my assignments for the week.

I made $120 a week and thought I was stealing. I actually mentioned to the paper’s publisher that I didn’t feel like I was earning what they were paying me. Or so I thought. I could write a 14-inch feature on a Tech cross country runner with one hand tied behind my back. Just write 3 or 4 stories a week and cash the check.

But then one day, Buddy went on one of his many trips, this time with the Lady Techsters. That meant I had to fill in for Buddy’s job that week as well. Layout the sports section, size the pictures, physically put the type on the page. The gruntest of grunt work. Plus, getting up at 6 a.m. was killing my nighttime college activities as well.

“Still don’t think you’re earning that check?” the publisher asked me during the middle of those two weeks.

The one thing I always appreciated about Davis was just how prolific he was as a sports writer. Nobody could crank out stories like he could. He’d have four or five bylines a day and then go take pictures at the Ruston High volleyball banquet.

Everybody loved Buddy and if there is anything good that came from his stroke in 2013, it’s this — hundreds of people whose lives Buddy had touched got a chance to come by, wish him well and tell him how much he had meant to them. And don’t think he didn’t love and appreciate it.

Forget about Terry Bradshaw or Karl Malone or Willis Reed; think about the thousands and thousands of athletes who Buddy Davis wrote about. Think about how when they look through an old newspaper clipping, they see their name from years ago. At the top of each story, it reads “By O.K. DAVIS, Executive Sports Editor” in scrap books all over the country.

For 14 years, I’ve had one of those old clippings underneath a magnet on the side of my refrigerator. As a walk-on for the Tech basketball team, my son was written about (and photographed) by Buddy in a preview for an upcoming Bulldog basketball game in 2005.

These days, that same former basketball walk-on is now the sports editor in another small Louisiana town just down the road. And he’s learning all about how that job is more than just writing game stories and taking pictures.

Which is what O.K. “Buddy” Davis was all about.