Editor's note: Longtime Foxboro Reporter sports writer Dave Comeau died in March after suffering a heart attack. Comeau was an institution in the Foxboro community and a respected journalist who won several Massachsetts Press Association Awards. The week after his tragic death, Foxboro Reporter editor Jeff Peterson wrote the following editiorial in tribute to his friend and colleague:

Dave's World

For the better part of the past 25 years, Dave's World has been a wonderful place where the hopes, dreams and aspirations of countless thousands of local youngsters came alive each week for the rest of us to share.

It was a special place created by a special person, where sports was a game, and winning and losing were secondary to the opportunity to learn about each other, to take pride in a common achievement and, sometimes, to watch a dream come true.

Dave's World was never an insider's club, where the gifted and talented received preferential treatment to the exclusion of all else, but a place where kids with exceptional abilities and those of limited abilities could both find their exploits chronicled for all to see.

Most of all, it was a state of mind, a return to an innocence where sensitivity was more important than objectivity.

For the vast majority of our readers, Dave's World was first and foremost about athletic competition. But Dave Comeau was hardly a one-dimensional person. To those who knew him, he was thoughtful, candid and opinionated, not only about sports, but about the issues of the day. he was also deeply religious, and though an unlikely role model lived out the teachings of the Gospels each and every day of his life.

Though he was a journalist for more than 25 years, David never yielded to the cynicism that runs rampant in this business. It was our everlasting good fortune that his work here at the newspaper intuitively struck that comfortable balance between reporting and cheerleading - which to some might seem the path of least resistance but in fact was a more difficult feat than many would ever know. Unlike most of the rest of us, he wasn't in the newspaper business to burnish his own ego, but was more than content quietly using his position to put a smile on the faces of others.

Characteristically gentle and inoffensive even when confronted, he found it especially difficult to write stories of a controversial nature and he would avoid it whenever possible. Only on those occasions when circumstances forced his hand would he steel himself to the task - and brace himself for the inevitable backlash. But he enjoyed it about as much as a dose of castor oil.

Over the quarter-century that Dave Comeau reported on sports for this newspaper, Foxboro has seen more than its share of heroics in the gym and on the playing fields. And in his unique position as chronicler of their achievements, Dave reveled in every championship.

But in Dave's World, anyone could be a hero, even if only until next week's issue. That's what made it special. And that's why our world won't ever be the same without him.