Yesterday Don Herbert, better known as his TV personality Mr. Wizard, died of bone cancer at the age of 89.

Just writing that line makes me sad. It’s odd how you can connect to TV personalities as if they were people close to you, though you never actually met them.

Mr. Wizard was for me what Mr. Rogers was for so many kids. He came before Bill Nye the Science Guy and Beakman’s World — a true original. But most of all, Mr. Wizard was a guy who came into my house and helped me learn about simple scientific concepts in a way I could understand as a young child. He was my first teacher.

I remember watching him perform simple experiments on TV that I could duplicate at home using household items (and let us not forget: parental supervision). My favorite was adding vinegar to baking soda. It was so simple but also a load of fun for a kid like me who was way too into volcanoes. I didn’t have to know why this concoction produced a foamy mess, just that it did and was fun. Thus the lesson: science can be fun (which was better than the lesson: science can build better bombs).

I didn’t know it then, but I was learning a very basic concept of chemistry and, years later, when I was in eighth grade, stupid facts like that were useful.

Sadly, I probably learned more from Mr. Wizard than I would from several teachers that came into my life via the public school system. Odd that people paid to teach me and inspire me to learn were so thoroughly outdone by a guy on TV. But it’s true. He stirred the love of knowledge in a lot of us that came through the eighties.

But it wasn’t just his show, Mr. Wizard’s World, that he gave to us. He also gave us a multi-purpose sarcastic response. His presence is so engrained in all of our psyches that I am sure all of us have at one time or another said, “Hey, way to go, Mr. Wizard.” I know I’ve said it at least once this year.

I know it might seem strange, but it’s that last reason that has me missing him. Plenty of people from my generation couldn’t tell you an experiment from that show if you had a gun to their head, but all of us remember the show itself. Very few things can bind a group of people, but just the knowledge of Mr. Wizard’s existence — in some small way — actually does.

In a world with so many terrible things going on — war, corruption, violence, famine, etc. — it’s hard to find the ties that bind us. And it’s weird, but sometimes it really is just the pop culture around us. Mr. Wizard was part of that.

In light of this loss, hopefully we can all take a minute to remember how learning can be fun, easy, and rewarding and to reflect on some memories from childhood that Don Herbert was a part of.

Patrick Duganz