As you grow older, you realize that there are certain people you meet who become part of your life, and that their lives are somehow woven into your own, no matter where they go, or what they do.

One such person for us is a young man, Mike Allen, who left town this week for Baltimore, where he has accepted a position with WJZ-TV.

We first met Mike nearly ten years ago, when we worked together at WMDT-TV in Salisbury. He was in college then, and like other students, worked part-time at the station. But Mike was never really like the other college students.

He was a fan of Frank Sinatra, and for ballroom dancing, and these unusual interests caught our attention back then, and made us curious about who this fellow was, and what made him tick.

That curiousity led us to an understanding not only of him, but of his generation as well, and that understanding made us see our own for the first time, as it appeared to him. It was an interesting perspective.

Mike respected our generation for the freedom it earned for individuals. He could see, as any student of history can, that our society was a stiff and restrictive one until the sixties, where women wore dresses and baked pies, white men made money, and hardly anyone else mattered.

Our generation didn't really change all that, but all that did change when we were coming of age. It was time, and the Class of 1968-72 fought a battle for freedom as surely as did the Class of 1940. It just wasn't overseas, and our uniforms were more creative, but it was a war, and we clearly won.

We won because it was time to win, it was time for women to get out of the kitchen, for blacks to come up from the basement, and for white men to get the hell off their high horse. There are still women in kitchens, of course, and black people in basements, but not all who are on horseback are white males, not anymore.

We never realized, until we got to know Mike, that his generation was grateful to ours for that, and respected us for it. It made us proud.

So now, Mike is gone again, this time to the big city where he will no doubt do well, and will continue to search for something he has never found here.

We believe we know what that is, and that it has something to do with his generation's view of ours. It is a legacy, and Mike intends to find it.

The legacy is the notion that happiness is possible, that it's not just to be pursued, but to be attained as well. It isn't easy to pursue happiness, it's much easier to accept what we have and make the best of it. That is what most people do.

So we wish our young friend good luck and godspeed, and we know that while his search may or may not be fruitful, his searching will enlighten others as it has enlightened us.

Good luck, Mike.