My mind has this habit of wandering backward.

Yes, it goes forward, too. It’s been moving ahead in this post-retirement phase to the next great adventure that awaits my wife and me. When it’s not thinking ahead, it occasionally drifts into the past.

My mind did so again today as I began thinking about two colleagues of mine who died within a week of each other under quite different circumstances.

Buddy Seewald died in an auto accident north of Amarillo. He wasn’t ready to leave this world. It happened. He was gone. Just like that.

Then came news of the death of Virgil Van Camp, a much older gentleman, who died of natural causes at the age of 87.

I wrote about them in September 2013. Here’s the link to that earlier piece.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2013/09/there-goes-another-good-man/

I tend to reminisce in my own mind about my past, about the career path I chose and the people I met along the way. Buddy and Virgil were two men who affected me greatly during the time we worked together. They were contributors to the Amarillo Globe-News opinion pages, which I had the high honor of editing for nearly 18 years.

My memory of them reminds me of how much tried-and-true fun I had pursuing this particular craft.

They enabled us to keep the newspaper more relevant in people’s lives. They would share their world view on particular issues. They would debate them between themselves and share their differing perspectives with Globe-News readers.

This was just on the eve of the Internet Invasion, before newspapers — the printed version that carriers would toss onto our porches — began losing their relevance.

I was proud to be a part of that era. It saddens me at some level to see all the changes that are occurring within the industry. Newspapers are printing fewer copies each day. They’re moving toward what publishers call the “digital product”; as an aside, I detest the word “product” to describe a printed newspaper.

While I am somewhat sad these days, I also look back with great fondness at the journey I was allowed to travel.

Friends and associates like Buddy and Virgil made it all the more fun.