Who can predict who will be memorable? You work a few feet from a person for five years, believe you know a fair amount about them, they leave … and five years after that … it’s hard to remember their faces. Or three salient non-work facts about them.

But sometimes people can be so unremarkable … as to be remarkable. I remember having this discussion in high school, with my friends. “Who will be the first guy in our class we forget?” And the two guys whose names always came up first … even then I knew I would remember them simply because they were so forgettable. And I do.

Then there’s someone like Joel Boyd, who worked in The Sun sports department as a full-timer for barely a year — but left a lasting impression. No one who is (or will be) part of this 33-person series spent as little time in San Bernardino … but I remember him clearly. Or I believe I do.

Is that about him? The times? The era?

At least in part, it’s because Joel Boyd was the best sports “word” person ever to walk through the door at 399 North D Street.

First, some truth in advertising. Joel Boyd’s tenure was so brief that even though he was hired in September of 1994, he was gone by October of 1995. Making the “1996” date (in the title) not correct. Something Joel Boyd, the editor, certainly would catch.

And some background.

Joel was one of the future stars who cycled through The Sun newsroom during a golden period in the middle 1990s when the paper was taking interns from Northwestern University — one of the nation’s leading journalism schools.

It was a great deal for the paper — eager, competent help for free … and I don’t think it harmed any of the Northwestern people, either. Aside from the handful who weren’t cut out for professional journalism but hadn’t tumbled to that fact.

We were quite a decent suburban back then, and the sports section was particularly attractive because we covered the professional beats, and the Northwestern people almost always were good enough to send down to do some Lakers/Dodgers/Angels/Rams/Raiders/USC/UCLA games. Which they got a buzz from. Then they would go back to Evanston and tell other sports-oriented writers, and we’d get another, and another. It was great.

Among those who interned 11 weeks in San Bernardino, and spent at least some of it in sports, were a batch who were to go on to long (and ongoing) careers in journalism. Among them, more or less in chronological order, were Tony Femino (now in radio), J.A. Adande (espn.com), Kevin Ding (OC Register), Laura Weisskopf, Jodie Valade (Cleveland Plain Dealer), Joel Boyd, Nate Ryan (USA Today) and Andy Baggarly (San Jose Mercury News).

So, Joel was one of them. But he stood out in a way the others didn’t.

For one, he was a Southerner. From Atlanta. Complete with Georgia drawl. For another, he was seriously preppy. Of the sort you rarely see in journalism. We don’t really have a particularly class-oriented society, but if we think about it, you don’t see many Old Money families sending their prep-school-educated sons to hang around ink-stained wretches.

Joel may have been a frat boy. If he wasn’t, he should have been, because he had that feel. He wore penny loafers without socks, which was about as California as galoshes. I distinctly remember him talking about going to the cleaners to pick up his laundry, and the staff giving him crap for such an effete/dandy preference/need.

He wore V-neck sweaters. His hair was of a certain length and generally unruly, in a sort of Bobby Kennedy way. He was bright-eyed and well-scrubbed but sometimes had a bit of a jaded, “Been there, done that” feel to him. He laughed easily but was not easily impressed.

That’s one reason Joel is memorable. He was an exception. A break in the type. He came from money, from social position (his father was a top executive in the U.S. Golf Association), and he carried himself with an assurance that I decided must come from knowing — knowing — he never would be poor or desperate. I just didn’t know people like that, and neither did the staff.

Joel also was unique, among the Northwestern folk, in that he had already decided he wanted to be a desk guy. An editor or copy editor. He didn’t have to be pushed into editing.

And that made him gold … along with the fact that he was so very good at it.

Generally, copy editors are made, not born. And made after they get into journalism. The best copy editors usually are the oldest, most senior people in the building. Many of them are former writers. All of them have learned the language steadily, like collecting string, over years and years.

Joel Boyd, however, came out of Northwestern nearly perfectly formed, as a copy editor. He was a 45-year-old editor in a 22-year-old body.

We noticed this right off, when he was an intern, in the winter of 1993. He worked desk the entire time he was in sports. I’m not sure he wrote. At all.

And when he graduated, in the spring of 1994, we were there with a desk job. It was an extremely easy call. Not only did he have a J degree from a great school, not only did he prefer editing … we knew him to be a superior candidate.

We had a seriously “clean” section the year he was with us. He read practically every story in the paper, and very little got past him. Certainly not if it pertained to style or grammar.

I thought his affection for the “comma” to be excessive. He was very old-school about it. Every clause … commas before and after. He did this to my copy, too, which was a bit bold, considering I was sports editor. But everything of mine he read … came out with about a half-dozen more commas than when it went in. I usually didn’t complain because Joel Boyd, copy editor, intimidated me. He probably was right — even if it made copy unnecessarily choppy, in my view.

Joel got along famously with his age cohort (Brian Neale, Doug Padilla), and the younger folks (Nick Johnson, James Curran, Lisa Renfro) who were working agate. He probably could tell stories that would compare with some of the best from the Late ’70s Era.

Earlier in this series I related an incident pertaining to James Curran … who was nearly unconscious from suckling on a bottle of Goldschlager, and had collapsed on a grassy patch below Joel’s north San Bernardino apartment. I don’t recall who it was who insisted someone roll him on his side, so he wouldn’t choke on vomit “like Hendrix” … but it was at the Boyd Farewell that this happened, not at the Neale Farewell, which preceded it by a few months. That was the night that ended with paramedics being dispatched to the scene, and some of us scattering ahead of their arrival.

Joel went to the Chicago Sun-Times as a copy editor, and not long after he got an “assistant sports editor” title. I believe he still holds that job.

I have seen some really strong journalists come straight out of school and make an immediate impact. But every single one of them, aside from Joel Boyd, was a writer. Writing and reporting … it’s something of a gift, and you have it or you don’t.

Joel Boyd was literally the only one who showed up as a copy editor, ready to kick the ass of raw copy. Beyond him being a good guy and a fun guy … that’s why I remember him as keenly as I do.