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Robert M. Bell, the flagship of my high-school class, passed over the horizon last week, and my world's center of gravity shifted.

I hadn't seen Robert in more than 20 years, but he had been a steady presence in my memory, a strong tie to the world in which I grew up and from which I launched my career: a world fast slipping away.

When we were classmates at the old Graniteville High School in Aiken County, S.C., I thought he would eventually become governor of South Carolina. He didn't -- not because he lacked the capacity, but more likely because he lacked the ambition or the taste for slash-and-burn politics. He was a moderate in an era that sometimes tilted toward extremes. But he did become the Aiken County attorney and a member of the state Democratic Executive Committee.

The last time I saw him was at a class reunion on the eve of the dedication of the Robert M. Bell Parkway in Aiken, honoring his service on the S.C. Highway Commission. I was master of ceremonies for the class event, and I turned it into a roast. Robert, I told my classmates, was 35 years old when we graduated. That wasn't true, of course. He was a teenager like the rest of us, but he had the look and manner of a man in full maturity. The next day, Strom Thurmond gave the main address at the parkway's dedication at the Aiken campus of the University of South Carolina. I can tell you that, even in high school, Robert was by far the better orator.

In our 1954 yearbook, Robert's name is followed by a long list of honors. He was president of the student body, class valedictorian and member and leader of various school organizations. He was voted "Most Dependable" and "Most Likely to Succeed."

My first story on a presidential election was written for the school paper in 1952, when we polled the student body on its preference. Dwight Eisenhower won over Adlai Stevenson in a landslide. Robert had been a Stevenson fan early on, but switched to Ike after a carload of us went to Columbia to hear the general give a campaign speech. In adulthood, Robert reverted to the Democratic Party.

Robert was a tall, well-formed man, but he lacked the coordination of an athlete. He was always a model of decorum. He was a scholar but not a show-off. He had a firm grasp of his own ability and never felt the need to advertise it. He excelled at teamwork and was a natural team leader -- not because he was aggressive, but because people wanted to follow him.

Robert and I faced each other four times in oratorical competition. I won the first two bouts. In our junior and senior years, he discovered the oratorical flourish and won going away. He became president of the student body; I became editor of the school paper. Each of us won a scholarship awarded by a foundation honoring William Gregg, the 19th-century industrialist who founded the Graniteville Co., the textile firm that gave life and breath to our town.

After the 1954 commencement ceremony, our paths diverged. Robert went off to the University of South Carolina to study law, and I went off to the University of Georgia to study journalism. By 1965, when he obtained his law degree, I was an editor with the newspapers in Norfolk, Va.

We were entering our 50s when we next saw each other at that class reunion in his honor. I was living in Virginia at the time, and we chatted about his experiences traveling through the Old Dominion on some legal assignment.

It was as if we had taken off our caps and gowns the previous day and now were getting back together -- older, paunchier and balder except for Robert, who still looked like a man of 35. Each of our careers had peaked. I realized that we and our classmates were now finished products, and not the moist clay of 1954, waiting to be molded. Robert, I figured, was not destined to be governor, but had he taken that road, he would have been a good, honest and objective one.

Robert is now a part of a world that used to exist. The old high school is now a middle school. The Graniteville Co. has long since vanished from the scene, and its shuttles have gone silent. The Gregg-Graniteville Foundation survived the company; Robert became president of the institution that financed our educations.

With his death, I see our generation and our world sliding inexorably into history. The old landmarks are gone. The old institutions are being replaced by the new. The village once well maintained by a paternalistic company now languishes in disrepair. The streets once kept smoothly paved are now cracked. The world Robert and I knew has passed on, and I can visit it only in memory. The world now is a foreign land in which I can sojourn only temporarily.

"Man's days are like grass," wrote the psalmist; "he blossoms like the flowers of the field; a wind passes over them, and they cease to be, and their place knows them no more."

In a little while, I suppose, our place will know us no more. But in the place that shaped us both, Robert Bell's memory will remain green for as long as a sliver of our world is visible through the glass of memory.

Readers may write to Gene Owens at 315 Lakeforest Circle, Anderson SC 29625. E-mail: Swampscum2@aol.com