When I got up this morning and saw the report that Bert Henderson was missing, my heart sank. I’ll be honest it was hard for me to work. I was concerned about his wellbeing. I immediately prayed for the best.

Sadly, Bert was found lifeless a few hours later on his home property in nearby Easley, S.C. It hit me pretty hard. I recently saw Bert at a basketball game; he and his youngest daughter, Kimberly, were in the back tunnel as I was making my way to the press seating in Littlejohn Coliseum.

Like always, Bert stopped me to say hello and shook my hand like a fine gentleman always does. That was Bert. He always had that affectionate smile and that handshake ready for you. I didn’t realize it at the time, or I would have stayed and talked longer, but that was the last time I saw Bert alive.

It hit me pretty hard that I will not see him again. Like a lot of things, I took that meeting for granted, I guess. I just assumed I would see him again. Since then, I have gone by his IPTAY office on three different occasions in the last three weeks, including on Monday. Each time he was not in his office.

I just wanted to check and see how he and his daughters were doing since his wife, Lee Ann, suddenly passed away a few months back from brain cancer. I knew her death was hard on Bert so I just wanted to see how things were going because that’s what Bert did for me when my mother passed away in 2011.

He called me up and checked on me when I was going through that, and when he saw me around Clemson, he always asked how I was doing and told me to stop by his office sometime to talk.

Bert was more than an associate athletic director at Clemson, he was a friend. He was not only a friend to me, but to anyone who came across his path in life. He always had an open door, and when he asked how you were doing, he was genuine. He really wanted to know how you were doing.

Earlier today I was speaking to my good friend Henry Guess about Bert. We both traded off stories and shared in some laughter about how great Bert and Lee Ann were. You rarely saw one without the other at Clemson sporting events.

Henry was telling me how during every home football game, on his way into work, he would pass the Hendersons’ tailgate, and how every time Lee Ann would tell Henry he better come over and get some food, or else.

“So of course I did,” Henry said laughing. “It was always good, and Bert and Lee Ann were just so nice and so welcoming. They were always smiling and were really happy to see you. That’s the kind of people they were.”

When he was the Executive Director of IPTAY, I used to help Bert with his columns in Orange: The Experience magazine. We had a lot of conversations in those days and we talked about a lot of things. One day, the conversation on how I became a sportswriter came up.

Of course, I told Bert the story of how the 1981 Clemson football team played a big role in it, and because of that I collected a lot of memorabilia from that championship season. Of course, that got Bert’s attention. From that point on, if he saw something 1981 and he could save it for me, he would call me up and tell me to come by his office.

In fact, shortly after Lee Ann passed away, he asked me to come by the office and said that he had something for me. He never got the chance to give it to me, though. We never had the chance to have another great conversation.

When I got the news just after lunch time that Bert was found dead, my heart sunk. My worst fear had come true. My thoughts immediately went to his two daughters. I immediately said a prayer for them. None of us can imagine what they are going through right now.

Then I started thinking of Bert, and how much I was going to miss his smiling face. I thought about how I was not going to get to hear his hunting stories anymore or how he would sit on his back porch at night and shoot the coyotes as they tried to get his cattle.

I will not get to hear his funny stories from when he was an assistant trainer on the 1981 football team or what William Perry and those guys did when they went to Japan in 1982. I will miss the stories he used to share about the basketball teams when he was a team manger back in the day.

Bert even taught me how to get the steak sauce out of a Heinz 57 bottle on one road trip to Tallahassee as we shared stories during lunch at a Waffle House. “There is a certain way you have to tap the bottle,” he said.

Bert was a good guy. One of the best I have ever known. When I first came to Clemson 13 years ago, Bert was one of the first people I met. He instantly made me feel at home.

He stuck out his hand, and with a big smile said, “Welcome to Clemson!”

That’s what Bert did. He was a friend to everybody. I just didn’t lose a friend today, Clemson did too.