Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, then returned in 1985. His SportsWatch column debuted in 2005.
Those of us old enough to remember the summer of 1986, and life in a more dangerous New York City, never would have forgotten the senseless shooting of police officer Steven McDonald.
But had McDonald chosen a different way to live with his injuries over the ensuing three decades, his story would have faded with time, and his death at age 59 Tuesday would have been more a historical footnote than a current event.
Current he was, though, from the very beginning, deciding that being paralyzed from the neck down need not mean disappearing into a private life, invisible to the public he served.