Sometimes I think I’ve been around the Herald too long.

I know my critics would agree with that.

Another hint came earlier this week from the obituaries in the paper.

I trotted off the Bonnie’s Hallmark and bought five sympathy cards.

Denny Maschka was the latest to touch my heart.

Whatta loss this is for so many.

I think Tom Stiehm, the mayor, had the best line about Mr. Maschka’s legacy. “He’ll be in heaven tending a garden or building a new park,” the mayor said of Denny’s passing.

Marvin “Bud” Foster’s passing was also a jolt.

Every Thanksgiving Day for the last several years, I would get a call from the former Brownsdale mayor wishing me a happy Thanksgiving holiday and my family, too. He always added, “We’re thankful for your friendship too.”

He really humbled me.

I thought he should be helping his wife, Ida, in the kitchen instead of calling me, but there he was on the phone making me feel lucky for calling him a friend.

I saw Beau and Brice Zabel grow up at Grace Lutheran Church.

Beau’s passing at such a young age just wasn’t supposed to happen: Children should not die before their parents and older generations.

Jim Thalberg, the Adams Health Care Administrator, admitted he was a shy guy whenever I interviewed him about something going on at Adams.

The one thing we could talk about was basketball and our sons.

During the summer league hoops action in Austin 15 years ago, they competed against each other and as fathers do, Mr. Thalberg and Yours Truly were there to cheer them.

Jim was not as noisy a fan as Yours Truly was.

Everybody liked Johnny Hill and wife, Gloria, too.

I was privileged to sit in his living room and visit with him for an interview.

Dairy cows and dairy princess granddaughters Johnny was most proud.

When his house was flooded in the valley along the north curve out of Adams, we talked more about a hundred other things than the flood waters.

Five people, five sympathy cards.

In my opinion, when anybody dies and leaves a loved one, it doesn’t make them any less important a person that those who got their picture and a write-up published in the Herald.

After all, everybody is somebody to some one.

It’s like those awful reports coming daily from Iraq: 60 people killed in a roadside bomb, 30 people killed or injured when a bomd exploded in an outdoor market, four soldiers killed when their Humvee rolled over during a rocket attack, mass burial pit found outside Baghdad and on an on.

All are tragic events, but when five people you know die, it’s personal.

I wonder if sometimes reporters can get to know too many people in their work?

Or too close to the people they know?