A friend of mine was buried this morning.

Oh, he wasn’t a person whose story you would normally expect to occupy this space … but he’d be thrilled to know it does.

What’s certain is that he absolutely deserves it.

Mike Walter was one of the most interesting people I’ve ever had the privilege to meet.

Society would call him “special needs,” but he surely WASN’T disadvantaged.

We met in the fall of 1970, my first season broadcasting Bradford High School football for WESB. He showed up in the Owls’ antiquated press box for the opener, a 15-year-old freshman special-education student, fascinated by radio and curious about how I set up my equipment.

It amazed him that my wife kept stats for me and that mine was the only voice on the air.

I can’t remember whether Mike stayed for the whole game that day … if he didn’t, it was about the only time.

For my 2 ½ years at the station, he was at virtually every BHS home game — football or basketball — insisting on interviewing me BEFORE the broadcast … always with a clipboard and keeping statistics in his own unusual way.

An avid WESB listener, Mike could recite the entire program schedule exactly as it was listed on our daily log … from the morning show, to the Kendall News Review and Sports Corner to Dream Dust.

He might have called me “Chuck” a couple of times early in our friendship, but after hearing one of the station’s DJs refer to me as “Señor  Pollock” on air … that became my nickname — delivered in a booming Spanish accent — for some 47 years.

In all my time knowing Mike, I never once remember him without a smile. He was as happy and content a human being as anybody I’ve ever known.

This from a person who could have found myriad reasons to be miserable.

Instead, he loved his job working at Future’s sheltered workshop, and for a Bradford beer distributor before that.  And because he was always so upbeat, there was nobody who didn’t like Mike.

His list of friends was staggering — literally hundreds filed past his casket during Tuesday’s wake — all extremely loyal and without ever being patronizing.

In my mind, one reason for Mike’s popularity was his mom, Jo Ann, a caring, giving woman who could have written a book on motherhood.

Mike was her first son, two years older than brother Tim. But six years after her youngest was born, she lost her husband to an auto accident, left to raise two very different boys.

Tim went on to be an outstanding athlete as a sprinter in track and participant in the third Big 30 All-Star Football Game. He became a teacher in the Bradford system and eventually retired as the school district’s athletic director.

Mike was, well, Mike, an unofficial ambassador who seemed to know everyone in town … his celebrity beyond even that of his brother.

And that’s where Jo Ann was such an outstanding parent.

Early on she saw the friendships her challenged son had cultivated, and though, like any mom, there was a protective side … it was from a distance. She was fully aware that he was always surrounded by people who cared and would look out for him.

Mike, who passed away Sunday at age 62, never outgrew his love for radio … especially sports.

After I left broadcasting for a job at the Times Herald, he befriended Mark Koelbel, a contemporary at Bradford High who earned a mass communications degree from St. Bonaventure and worked for a time at Olean’s WHDL.

Koelbel, now a TV anchorman in Salt Lake City, would often bring him to the station for his evening shift.

But, for over the last three decades, Mike had been the near-constant sidekick of WESB’s Frank Williams (nee Arlington) for Bradford football and basketball games, home-and-away.

The three of us never felt the least bit inconvenienced by his presence, especially since that proximity to radio brought him such enjoyment.

It’s long occurred to me that Mike’s life could have taken a downward path … instead it went 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

Even after his mother’s passing nine years ago, forcing him to move from home to a special needs facility, every day he was at Future’s, the same smiley guy he’d been all his life … his face a bit changed by age … but not the grin.

Ron Nicholas, who worked at WHDL when Koelbel would bring his “intern” to the station, recalled, “Not only was Mike such a happy person … he always lifted up the people around him.”

Of course, I’ll miss him and his greetings — complete with accent — but he lived much longer than might have been expected given his learning and physical issues. By any measure, his was a very fulfilling existence.

Would that more people got as much from their lifetimes as Mike Walter did from his.

(Chuck Pollock, a Times Herald sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)