If the merit of a man’s life can be judged by what he leaves behind, Ed Reed was amazingly successful.

Reed died early Sunday after nearly nine decades of life.

Reed’s public legacy is well known. He coached football teams all over Mississippi and parts of Alabama and he was highly successful at it, leaving in the record books a string of great victories and back-to-back state championships for South Natchez High School in the early 1980s.

Reed was by all accounts, a great football coach. He was inducted in the Mississippi Coaches Hall of Fame, as he should be.

But to simply discount Reed as a great coach is to miss the man’s greatest legacy — the throngs of men who loved him like a father in appreciate for the love, respect and encouragement he showed each of them.

Reed helped foster young coaches and pretty much encouraged everyone within the sound of his voice, even long after he had retired from coaching. He was a good man who did great things — on and off the field.

Coach Reed will be remembered in Natchez for many, many years to come for what he did on the field, but mostly for the impact he had on the lives of those around him.