About 45 years ago, a dynamic graduate student from the University of South Florida began teaching physical education at Brandon Academy.
Tiras Odisho Anwaya made a positive impression on just about everyone there, but none more than Jerry Noland, who hired him.
"He lives in the moment. He lives in the now," Noland said. "It was a lesson for me."
Time marches on, though, and Noland and her group of friends - who call themselves The Brandon Broads - lost track of Anwaya. They figured he had returned to the Middle East, maybe his native Syria.
Letters went unanswered. Efforts to learn about his fate in the war-torn area failed. But Noland is not the type of person who lets people exit her life, so she kept trying even as she feared the worst.
"I was really afraid he might be dead," she said.
He is not.
Recently, Anwaya returned to Brandon after all those years for a glorious reunion with his friends. The story of how they reconnected and the moments he experienced could fill a book.
Through the magic of Google, Noland eventually learned Anwaya was the inspector general of Iraq's Olympic team, but still couldn't reach him. That changed during the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.
I was there for The Tampa Tribune, and I quoted him in a column about that team's inspiring presence in those Games. Noland read the story and couldn't believe her good fortune at finding someone who could get a message through to Anwaya.
She got in touch with me, and I made sure he got the news.
Anwaya quickly responded. Letters, emails and phone calls followed.
"I got involved in all the problems in Iraq, and I'm a lousy letter-writer," he told me after he had reconnected with the Brandon group. "Phone calls are difficult to make for us, but I missed them a lot."
He promised at the time he would return to Brandon for a face-to-face visit. It took 14 years, but he made good on that vow. The band was back together - for a few days.
They shared stories, laughs and hugs. They caught up. They ate good food. Time and distance melted away.
But the road to get this far was perilous.
Being associated with the Iraqi team while Saddam Hussein was in power could literally put one's life in danger. Uday Hussein, Saddam's son, was a monster who considered torture a sport.
He was known to have soccer players caned if they lost and to force them to kick iron balls in practice until their feet bled. He had a weightlifter flogged with 100 lashes for failing to win a medal at the Sydney Olympics.
While Anwaya was refereeing a karate match with Iraq's national team (he holds a black belt), Uday Hussein became furious because he wouldn't cheat so the home squad could win.
Maybe that explains why he lived in hiding with the Kurds for three years in the mountains somewhere by the Turkish border. That also would explain why letters didn't reach him.
Anwaya is 73 now, and a grandfather. He is the advisor to the president of the National Olympic Committee of Iraq and lives in Sweden with his wife.
But to Noland and her friends, the essence of the person they knew all those years ago hasn't changed.
"Love just oozes out of him," she said. "His philosophy is that money is to be spent, wine is to be drunk, and women are to be loved. Even with all that he experienced, there is no bitterness. There is no acrimony. There is only love.
"Everything delights him. We could tell that from the start. He has a way about him that just brings people to him."
And some of them won't let go.