Many young writers grew up wanting to be Bill Buckley. I grew up wanting to be Bill Reel. For those not old enough to remember, his column in the Daily News (and later, Newsday and the Tablet) — “Reel People”– belonged to a genre of city writing that once made our newspapers such a treat to read.

Occasionally he used his pulpit for some interesting arguments, once proposing himself for either a cardinalship or a spot on the Supreme Court when he learned that you didn’t have to be a priest to qualify for the former or a lawyer to qualify for the latter. For his most faithful readers, though, “Reel People” was the column of the second chance. Week after week, he wrote about New Yorkers — alcoholics, gamblers, cheaters — who had messed up their lives pretty badly, but were searching for the road back. He wrote about these misfits with wisdom and humor and charity, because he saw them the same way Mother Teresa viewed the hard cases that often crossed her path: “There goes Christ in one of his more distressing forms.”

Nowhere was this newspaperman’s commitment to the dignity of the human person more evident than in his embrace of the unborn. After one Mother’s Day column about the Good Counsel homes for pregnant women — it was a desperate time for them financially — Bill received a call from Francis Albert Sinatra, asking where he could send his donation.

Last night he left this world for a better one, his last words to his son being that he was “full of faith.” Indeed he was. Bill Reel, R.I.P.