metrolink oddities

as i read and grieved the loss of some truly amazing people due to the metrolink accident, i was reading one obit and came to realize that i had gone to high school with the subject of the obituary--a LOOOOONG time ago and on the other side of this continent. I tihnk we were even on the staff of the school newspaper together--in the day when it required a mimeograph machine to become a publication.
weird, huh? but it was kind of amazing to well, "catch up" with what he'd been doing before being swept off to heaven: he'd been a great teacher, obviously listened to at critical moments, with a wife and son who were close and loving...what more legacy could anyone want to leave? sure, he might have thought it would be nice to retire, to travel, something...but how much better to be caught unawares and to discover that one has left a legacy worth recounting. it's one thing to be kindly remembered because everyone feels badly for your family. It's quite another thing to have left a small wake of shock and awe simply because you were a person whose living so positively impacted others that your dying actually causes them to remember how well and beautifully you stepped into their lives when you were needed. A salute to Paul S Long, who as i recall, was the sports desk at the newspaper at BJA. May we all live so well that we die so well.