In a stunningly short period, we have lost Edgar Allen, Elmer “Tiger” Hall, Luke Kruytbosch, Tony Snow, and Lee Wagner. All were friends except Snow, whom I had come to admire for his work – first on the Fox News Channel, then as President George Bush’s press secretary.

They were kindred spirits in that they were gentlemen, first and foremost, who made the world a better place. They cared. They helped. They used their God-given talents less for personal gain and more to enrich the lives of others.

I met Edgar Allen in the early 1960s, when I was a young sports writer for The Lexington Herald-Leader and he was part of an excellent group of Nashville writers that included Fred Russell, John Bibb, Jimmy Davy, and Dudley “Waxo” Green.

When I became sports editor of The Courier-Journal in 1977, Edgar was sports editor of the now-defunct Nashville Banner. He left that job in 1979 to become publicity director at Churchill Downs, replacing Raymond Johnson, another former Nashville sports editor who was as surly as Edgar was pleasant.

Despite his impressive career credentials, Edgar threw himself into a new job with the enthusiasm of a rookie. He always was eager to please no matter how difficult the request. He worked so hard, and was so kind and decent to everyone, that I hated it when people would treat him rudely or try to take advantage of him.

He was a mentor and father-figure to all the young people who worked for him, most notably Tony Terry, who succeeded him when Edgar retired in the early 1990s and returned to Nashville to live out his days with his wife, Ruth.

Sometimes Edgar and I would meet for lunch at Wagner’s Pharmacy, just across from the track at the corner of Fourth and Central. There we would usually run into the proprietor, Lee Wagner, who inherited the business from his father and built it into a semi-famous racetrack institution and must-visit stop for tourists.

Under Lee, Wagner’s became what surely is the only pharmacy in the nation that sells as many Daily Racing Forms as bottles of aspirin. It also has always had an old-fashioned lunch counter where customers can read the Form over coffee and eggs.

Lee loved all racetrackers, from the lowly grooms and hotwalkers to the big-name trainers and owners, and he always had his shelves stocked with life’s necessities – medicine, whiskey, and the Daily Racing Form. He was there every day, wearing his white pharmacist’s coat, always ready to cash a check, pat a back, or listen sympathetically to a tale of woe.

I’m not sure when it became cool for the Derby celebrities to visit Wagner’s, but you could never tell whom you might see during the week. One day I looked up from my eggs to see O.J. Simpson waiting for a table. Fortunately, he left before I could throw up.

It was comforting to know that Lee’s four children plan on keeping Wagner’s open and running it as their father did for more than four decades. Among other things, this means that trainer Nick Zito, who became best of friends with Lee, still will be able to get his egg-salad sandwiches at the lunch counter when he comes to Louisville with a Derby horse.

I hung out at Wagner’s quite a bit in the early 1970s, when Jim Bolus and I were working undercover on a horse-racing investigative series for The Courier. One of our editors was Elmer “Tiger” Hall, who was then the paper’s city editor.

Reporters loved working for Elmer because he cared about all the right things. He believed in hard work, going the extra mile, checking and re-checking sources, and, above all, getting it right. But he also cared about the reporters as people. After work, he would often go to Teek’s World Famous New York Bar, where we hung out, and have a few cold ones with us as we rehashed the day’s events, swore at editors not named Elmer “Tiger” Hall, and planned the Pulitzer-Prize stories of the future.

He was loyal to his reporters and we, in turn, were intensely loyal to him. But, believe me, you did not want to cross him. He could take a joke as well as the next guy and was easy to get along with as long as you were busting your tail for him. But woe be to the reporter who tried to bull—- him or cut corners. The one thing you never wanted to happen was for Tiger to call you in his office, his face red, and shut the door.

When Bolus and I had completed our investigative series in 1972, I was assigned to the city desk as a special-projects writer. I had just returned to the Courier from four years at Sports Illustrated in New York, and Elmer wanted to find out if I was willing to be a team player. So he assigned me to every crap job he could think of, just to see how I would react.

I took it as a challenge. If he assigned me to cover a sewer-board meeting, I was determined to write the best sewer-board-meeting story in the history of journalism. And so it went for a year or so. At the end, we had a lot of respect for each other and remained friends for many years. He made me a better journalist, as the best editors always do, and I tried to thank him for that whenever I saw him.

When Luke Kruytbosch introduced himself to me in 1999, I was immediately impressed with his how polite he was. Although he had been hired as “the voice of Churchill Downs,” he didn’t let it go to his head. He was deferential to old-timers, such as myself, and eager to learn about the Derby’s history from people who had actually lived some of it.

Luke wanted to hear stories about the late Chic Anderson, the great track announcer who was so good that he moved from Ellis Park to Churchill to the New York Racing Association with breathtaking speed. CBS thought so much of Chic that it hired him to call all the Triple Crown races. His 1973 call of Secretariat’s 31-length Belmont Stakes victory is one for the ages.

After Chic went to the big time, Mike Battaglia did the job competently for many years. He’s always been one of my favorites at least partly because his dad, Johnny, was one of the best and smartest racetrack operators I’ve ever known. Mike was replaced for a couple of years by Kurt Becker, who opened the way for Luke’s hiring by deciding – horrors! – that he preferred horsepower, as in NASCAR, to horses.

Luke was one of those people that you always enjoyed seeing because he had a big smile on his face. Even after he had done the Derby a number of times, he still seemed almost in awe of where he was. I’m not sure that Luke ever understood how good he was or could be.

Where Edgar, Elmer, and Lee all lived to see their senior years, Luke was only 47 when his body was found in his apartment in Evansville, Ind. He was there to do the races at Ellis Park, as he had been doing since Churchill hired him in 1999. One of the great things about Luke was that he worked just as hard for Ellis as he did for Churchill, despite the obvious differences in the quality of racing and fan interest.

It’s sad to think of the pressbox at Ellis without Luke and Cliff Guilliams. Eerily, Guilliams also was alone and in a hotel room when he was found dead only a week or so before this year’s Derby. As gruff and curmudgeonly as Luke was sunny, Guilliams carved out a career for himself by doing race charts, making gambling lines, and covering Ellis for the Evansville Courier. Both Cliff and Luke loved the sport, its people, and its stressful lifestyle with all their hearts.

Which brings me to Tony Snow.

Although I didn’t share his political views, Snow always impressed me as a bright guy who articulated his positions extremely well. He was surely what President Bush had in mind when he talked about “compassionate conservatives.” I felt that you could believe Tony, even if you didn’t agree with him.

Watching from afar, I thought he performed admirably in the difficult job of White House press secretary. In the sometimes contentious press conferences, he seemed to give as good as he got. He never seemed to get angry, no matter how provoked. He spun the administration’s message persuasively and, always, with a smile.

I admired him even more for the courageous way he dealt with his cancer. He was as brave as a person can be in such dire circumstances. Always expressing his love for his God and his family, Tony Snow taught us how to die with dignity and grace.

Each of these men showed us how to be better people and how we should treat each other. The world is a darker place because they are gone. But we who knew them are better for what they brought to our lives.