Remembering Jim Long

In Wednesday's paper, I wrote a story about the passing of a friend of mine and former colleague Jim Long.

I used anecdotes and quotes from other people, but now here's my 2 cents:

• Jim was such a nice guy. He would always greet you with a cheery, "hey there."
• He was always the journalist. Even when he was ill and couldn't be a part-timer covering high school football for us, he would e-mail us notes and updates on stories of ours he read. And the comments always came across as constructive and helpful, not critical.
• Over the years, I was most likely to see him at Mavericks Stadium in Adelanto. I liked to refer to it as "The House that Jim Long Built." That might be a stretch, but he was there in the early, glory years. It was also an important place to him, and he was a guy who spent a lot of time there over the years, even when he wasn't reporting. He had a vast knowledge of the history of the team.
• The most time I spent with Jim over several days was I believe in August 1994, when we were both covering the Little League Western Regional for The Sun. I had the earlier shift and Jim the later one, but we overlapped each day and coordinated our coverage. Jim took every assignment seriously and treated the people he was covering with the respect that he would've liked to receive. He will be missed.