What he has done in his life is highly impressive. Who he is, is more impressive still.

Wes Jordan was the head athletic trainer at the University of Maine. For 29 years, after graduating from Maine in 1962 as a football letterman, Wes was the man who cared for Black Bear student-athletes. Through the baseball years of the late coach Jack Butterfield and then coach John Winkin, through the best and toughest times for Maine football and basketball, and then into the hockey era, Wes was there.

He cared. He cared about Maine. He cared about his job. He cared about his students. He cared about the university.

As an athletic trainer, he honored himself and the state with his work at the 1980 Winter Olympics, at the Pan Am Games, with the USA Baseball program and with his election to the National Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame.

Twenty-five of his students went on to become certified athletic trainers even though Maine had no such program. Wes saw them and so many others successfully though their college years as a teacher, mentor and a friend.

After all those taped ankles, all those arm, leg and shoulder treatments, and all those medical miracles that kept athletes playing, he cannot now fix himself.

Wes Jordan has pancreatic cancer.

The plan was to organize the fund drive this winter for the Wes Jordan Athletic Training Education Complex at the university. It will be an instructional facility to train trainers. There will be scholarships established in Wes’ name. There will be national accreditation sought for the program.

The plan was to honor Wes regarding all this in the spring. Wes’ body has decided otherwise.

On Dec. 14 at 2 p.m. at Lengyel Hall at the university, the site for the trainers’ complex, Wes will be honored. He was reluctant to do this. He is a modest man. I have been asked to MC the event. I am honored.

As a student at Orono and then while practicing law in the area, I spent my noon times at Memorial Gym playing pickup basketball.. Wes had the same comment every day: “Who are you trying to kid?”

Sweaty and exhausted after the games, I headed for Wes’ office. I started smiling before I got there. He skewered my lack of basketball abilities, told jokes, and waited on athletes from every sport who popped in and out of the training room. He made me happy.

The big man tromped around his office, around his training room, around the campus. This was a Maine man from the core of his soul. This was your dream neighbor, your hoped-for friend, your role model as a trainer.

On Dec. 14 a lot of people are going to tell him just those things and more. This day will be a celebration of what he accomplished in his chosen field. More importantly, it will be a celebration of who he is and what he means to so many.

You are invited to be there. Just show up.

Wes will be there. He is worried about speaking at the event. His body is one concern, his emotions another. He doesn’t want to cry.

Tears of joy are always appropriate. You won’t be alone in those, good friend.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and NBC sportscaster.