Not long ago I went downtown to The Raleigh Times Bar to attend a farewell party for retiring N&O business writer Dudley Price. Before joining The N&O, Dudley was one of "ours," a member of the young, energetic, fun-loving and feisty Raleigh Times staff before that paper was retired in 1989.

At Dudley's blast, I struggled to match some faces with names and personalities from the past. Time does that to someone who has seen as many people come and go through the swinging doors of the newsroom as I have.

Our profession is rich with unique, imaginative, sometimes eccentric people who are called to their work as surely as missionaries or politicians are called to theirs. Some are remembered more than others for those eccentricities.

There was Richard, the lazy guy who frequently hid out in the public library instead of covering his beat. His wife called one day to say, by golly, Dick had to have a raise. If he didn't have the nerve to ask for it, by golly, she did. I informed her that when Dick made his choice between reading room and newsroom, we would see about his raise.

Larry, the great procrastinator, wrote a weekly column called "Saturday's Child," which more often than not arrived at my desk way past his deadline. But he had style.

As consistently late to work as an Alaska spring, he was even tardy on his last day. But before I could chew him out again, the newsroom doors swung open and a uniformed waiter from the Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel swept in, pushing a serving cart laden with silver vessels from which he laid out a sumptuous breakfast for Larry.

Mac shaved on the job, at his desk, and had a tendency to sulk. He was the one who covered the unforgettable maiden voyage of Raleigh's short-lived Navy, created by an eccentric city councilman in the 1960s.

Mac went reluctantly out to the Neuse River where the councilman, dressed in the uniform of a full admiral, set out in a canoe to sail down the river to the sea. After the admiral and his canoe capsized, a wet, muddy and pouty Mac returned to the newsroom where he submitted an expense chit for a shoeshine and dry cleaning.

John was the newsroom con man. Assigned to review the Carolina Playmakers' production of "Look Homeward, Angel" in Chapel Hill, he turned in overtime for staying up all night to read the lengthy novel beforehand.

Years later he called from Italy, asking the editor for a letter substantiating his IRS deduction for using his apartment as his "office." The connection was poor, but he kept saying something about the IRS not letting him come home again.

Outwardly easygoing Mike once confided that on his way to Raleigh for his job interview, he had a flat tire. When the jack kept toppling over on the soft shoulder of N.C. 54, Mike went berserk and, seizing the jack, attacked his car, breaking a side window, as his tearful young wife tried to calm him.

Long gone from memory, most of the others, like leaves before an autumn wind.

I remember a long ago comment by Lady Nancy Astor, the first woman to serve in the British Parliament.

Persuaded by her husband and others not to seek re-election after 25 years in the House of Commons, Lady Astor, near tears, was cleaning out her desk.

"You'll be missed," one of her peers said.

"No, I won't," Lady Astor said brusquely, and somewhat bitterly. "I won't be missed at all. They're never missed. They just disappear over the horizon, some with lights blinking, others not, and are heard of no more."

It's only human for us to sometimes think of ourselves as indispensable: to a job, to a family, to the world. It's a way to avoid facing up to our mortality.

As Lady Astor noted, some go over the horizon with lights blinking. These we remember, for a while at least. The same is true of our lives. If we can go out with lights blinking in the dusk of our departure, that's about the best we can hope for.

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