The elderly gentleman had come in to The N&O offices to take out a classified ad. As he was leaving through our front lobby, he said, "Now that Dennis Rogers. We're sure gonna miss him. Would you tell him we're gonna miss him?" Now there's a conversation I've had with almost every regular News & Observer reader I've encountered since the day when it was announced that Rogers was retiring. They "can't believe" Dennis is bidding farewell. They stop to recall a specific column, maybe from last month, or last year or 20 years ago. They talk about the yellowed copy they're keeping in a chest of drawers at home.

If a columnist is reflecting on a legacy of some sort -- and Dennis, shy by nature, is not much for that sort of thing -- then I'll take that fraying copy of an old column in a drawer as the best tribute anyone could have. How many thousands of folks who live in Eastern North Carolina, or did at one time, have something by Dennis Rogers folded up somewhere, all the more worn from being unfolded and read and shown around to people? Thousands. Tens of thousands.

There will be lots of tall tales told on ol' Dennis as retirement nears, as he makes for good stories, be they printed or broadcast. (He's logged a little time on local television, after all.) It's true he can be quite the character. All that motorcycle stuff. And the barbecue. Dennis would do his thing on public TV sometimes, giving it his best good ol' boy deal, and he does indeed have encyclopedic knowledge of barbecue and side dishes. Then there was anything that might qualify under the general heading of "Bubba." Dennis on Bubba fashion, on Bubba music.

But at this point, it would be a woeful injustice to let Dennis away from these premises without offering up a few truths.

First of all, the fellow who is indeed a good ol' boy is also Phi Beta Kappa from UNC-Chapel Hill. (After his Army time.) As I recall, he broke the Phi Beta Kappa key some years ago trying to pry the tab open on a can of peaches. But once in a while, in conversation or perhaps in an editorial board meeting -- more about that in a second -- Dennis would throw in some obscure reference to European history or Hemingway. Then, true to his nature, he would invoke the same response Barney Fife offered when Barney quoted Shakespeare once to Sheriff Andy, who looked astonished. Barney said, and so did Dennis, "You're not dealing with a jerk, you know." (Dennis, by the way, is a much-awarded amateur actor who's trod the boards, as they say, on many a stage in Raleigh and elsewhere in Eastern North Carolina. )

On that editorial board thing, Dennis for several years contributed editorials for a couple of days a week in the midst of his columnizing. He wrote with clarity and passion. I knew Dennis would be good at it, because he never lacked for opinions. Anyone who can write a column for 30 years might climb a few fences, but he won't be sitting on them. We have been missing him these last weeks when he's been on special assignment writing about our valiant military people and their families.

Dennis was, of course, the perfect choice for such an assignment, and not because of his own eight or nine years in the Army. What he's been doing of late is all about talking to people, and really, mostly getting them to talk to you. At this, he is a master, and it has nothing to do with his knack for interviewing. It is because people know the minute Dennis walks into a room that he's there for the story, he wants to understand them, he's going to listen, and he'll be fair.

That's the same on the part of those to whom he talks and about whom he writes, whether they're Eastern North Carolina bartenders and barbecue chefs or one of the other characters he's "covered" these last 30 years or a Ft. Bragg family struggling with the absence of their soldier far from home. What he has written, very personally, will be shared by many and saved for decades.

Which reminds me it's time to re-read that favorite Dennis Rogers column. I know exactly which drawer it's in.