Legends in our midst.

Most of us can only imagine what it would be like to win five NBA championships over an illustrious 20-year career or to score 33,643 points — fourth-best all-time.

Kobe Bryant was a legend in every sense of the word. He and eight others, including his teenage daughter, died in a tragic helicopter crash last week.

There are legends walking among us right here in P.E.I. and over the past few weeks, three of them in my orbit were laid to rest.

For more than 25 years, Gerald McCarville served as mayor of Kensington. I got to know him during the 1980s covering the town’s monthly meetings for The Guardian. His accomplishments as a public servant are remarkable and well documented. But I’ll also remember him as a thoughtful and compassionate man who took an interest in everyone he met — even a young reporter who’s sister was battling leukemia. When he approached me before a council meeting one evening, I suspected it was to discuss an article I had written something that hadn’t necessarily put the town in a good light. Instead, he leaned over and told me he was sorry to hear about my sister and asked how she was doing.

Eventually, our meetings became less frequent but when we did meet, including the last time a few years ago, he always asked about Lorri and was genuinely happy to learn that she had beaten cancer and was working as an RN.

Harry Lecky never ran for office but if he had, I’ll bet he would have been successful. As Father Danny said during his funeral service, “He was a friend of everyone.”

For most of his 90 years, this soft-spoken bachelor lived at the Lecky homestead in Milburn (near O’Leary) where he continued to welcome friends and neighbours until the day before he died.

My earliest memory of Harry was listening to him sing half a century ago at a small church in nearby Glenwood. Music was an integral part of this humble farmer’s life, ever since he first picked up a fiddle as a teenager. He taught himself to play in a most unusual way, cradling his fiddle in his lower arm against his chest so he could sing and play at the same time.

And oh, how he played that fiddle and sang — at his own home and countless house parties and ceilidhs, benefit concerts and seniors’ homes, even while convalescing in hospital.

One of his musical partners was my aunt, Florence (Silliker) Young, who grew up just down the road from Harry and died a week earlier. She carried a love of music with her during her 80 years and was a terrific pianist in her own right. She often accompanied fiddlers the likes of Harry and her brother, Alton, and others. Her first love, though, was her family and as a parent, grandparent and great-grandparent, she set the bar incredibly high for others, like myself, whom she inspired.

Although they won’t be remembered like Kobe for their prowess in sports, Gerald, Harry and Aunt Florence were — in my opinion — all legends in the game of life. They were real people who quietly went about making their little corner of the world a better place by selflessly sharing their time and talents, by caring for and serving those around them and by living each day to the fullest.

Godspeed.