I loved the way he was looking up at me as I spoke. I couldn’t fixate on him, because I was also supposed to be speaking to the 199 or so other people in the audience. But it was his eyes and what seemed to be a permanent smile that I was drawn to.

I wanted to know what he was thinking. Was he absoarbing the fact that this whole night, in my mind, was about him — not the book I just finished.

I mean, 25 years ago, he was me as I am now, a guy who traded the newsroom for the classrooms to perhaps leave a bigger mark on the world. That’s what he told me at dinner a hour before in one of several topics we covered.

He talked about a former classmate Don Lehman, and how he kicked it into gear late in college to become a really talented journalist ready for the world despite a rocky start that many of us are guilty of. Don clearly left a mark.

But in the next breath, he was asking me about my wrestling or boxing, two things I’ve never done.

We talked baseball, a passion of both or ours, and sometimes the conversation made perfect sense like about my beloved Red Sox winning the series. He knew that I loved them and remembered the Red Sox game we saw together at Camden yards with another of his former students who now works at the Washington Post.

Seconds later, though, he was laughing at my misery when I meantioned the Cardinals, thinking that was my team.

At times I was left kind of nodding and smiling — and ashamed that I couldn’t know what he was trying to convey to me. I felt stupid, even though his words sometimes didn’t make sense. And I’m pretty sure he knows they don’t make sense and tries to move on to compensate.

I wanted to will the words out of him and to tell him that I did box or wrestle or tell him whatever he wanted to hear to make him feel secure in his thoughts. I didn’t know how to react when things didn’t make sense. Should I just go with it? It made me a little sad.

A guy who could captivate a room seemed to be at a place in his mind where he knows what’s happening to him yet is fighting so hard to be the same guy he was. The fact he succeeded at times despite what’s playing out in his mind is a testament to who he has always been, a mastor orator capable of captivating a room with powerful questions, an engaging personality and an ancorman’s voice.

He was driven and worked hard as a professor to make sure we understood the underpinnings of the profession and he whipped us with his red pen when our efforts fell short, but always in a coaching, non-demeaning way.

And there I am, 24 years after graduating from his teachings, standing in front of him giving a lecture to a packed house about a book of my life through stories and classrooms that’s dedicated to him.

He looked proud. He looked happy. And when I made the room stand in his honor, I think he felt special. I hope that in that instant, his brain fully engaged and soaked up that moment that was meant only for him. I hope he realized how much he meant to a guy who copied his career and now hopes to be as good.

And when he came up to me after I finished and with a huge smile was telling me how great my talk was and how good I had done, I hope his brain was still fully engaged and he meant it. A former student still wants and needs that reassurance, I think.

I told everyone that I wanted to make him king of the Castle(ton) last night and I think I did. And I hope that’s one memory that outlasts a lot of the others.