One year has passed, and I still think about Dante Anderson often.

The former Eastside basketball standout who, along with friend Curtis Hampton, died in a car wreck May 19, 2007 should have spent his senior year figuring out which of the many interested colleges he would be playing for, getting his grades and test scores in order and trying to lead the Rams to their second FHSAA Class 5A state championship in three seasons.

Unfortunately, we’re all only left with our own recollections.

I saw EHS coach Pop Williams for the first time since Dante’s funeral at a football game last fall. Williams and Anderson butted heads their share of times, but the coach loved his star player. He told me then (and almost every time I’ve seen him since) that he missed Dante very much. I have no doubt he meant more as a person than as an athlete.

The two Gainesville-Eastside games at Santa Fe Community College, while enjoyable to watch, still felt like something ” someone ” was missing. And when I covered the FHSAA final four in Lakeland, I could only wonder what Dante’s younger brother, Benji Bell, felt when he was inserted late into P.K. Yonge’s 3A title-game loss to Fort Lauderdale Pine Crest. After all, in 2006 Dante walked away the final four MVP after the Rams defeated Tampa Chamberlain for the 5A championship.

Hopefully, if his mind drifted at any point, Benji remembered how happy Dante was in that very arena two years earlier. That was the week he introduced himself to the state at the expense of Chamberlain and the Lake Howell tandem of Chandler Parsons and Nick Calathes in the semifinal.

I can still see Dante sitting at The Lakeland Center podium with the widest smile imaginable as easily as I can see the wreckage that took his life a football field away from my office building.

One memory I want to keep. The other, I hope fades away.

RIP DA.