The recent passing of local sports talk legend Eddie Andelman brought me back to my early reporting days as a sports writer for Bostonia Magazine at Boston University.

Throughout any career there are bona fide mentors, but also people who may just help once along the way but have a lasting impact.

For me, Eddie Andelman was among the latter.

Decades ago, I was assigned to write a story about the 20th anniversary of “The Sports Huddle,” the pioneering sports talk show started by Andelman and a couple of his friends. As a young sports fan and then budding sports writer, I enjoyed listening to the Boston radio show and was excited to interview Andelman and his sidekicks, Jim McCarthy and Mark Witkin.

However, Andelman and I just couldn’t schedule a time to meet. There was no Doodle or Google Calendar tools back then for supposedly simplifying such scheduling.

In a last-minute effort to connect, Andelman invited me to conduct my interview live on the radio during the show. What was initially intended to be an interview with Andelman turned into a trip down memory lane for him, his co-hosts, and their listeners, as people shared their favorite recollections from the show’s first 20 years. I don’t think I had time to be nervous about doing my first live on-air interview: It was a fun couple of hours that flew by.

I recall having a recording of the show on a mini cassette, and maybe still have in some crumbling form somewhere in a box.

I never did run into Eddie again during my career as a sports writer, business writer, technology writer, and eventually local news writer, but I’ll always remember his spontaneous suggestion to do the interview on air. It was a good early lesson in having to think on my feet, and of listening to the audience to capture a story.