I feel very lucky that I grew up watching M*A*S*H almost as it happened. My family had an almost obsession with the show. In fact, I have almost every episode in my basement – on video tape from back in the early 1980s when we first got a VCR and would cue the thing up to capture the many reruns which appeared all over the TV dial.

I know I can get the show on DVD now or watch it on FX, but those tapes are a legacy to how much my parents loved a good joke. I learned more about smart-aleck comments from M*A*S*H than anywhere else.

That’s why I felt particularly saddened when I heard Larry Gelbart, one of the show’s architects, died last week. As I have said before, I don’t get worked up over the deaths of people who entertained me, but this one just made me reflect a little on those great moments of humor I experienced as a child. I may have been the only 10-year-old who considered “ferret face” to be an insult of the highest order.

Instead of going on and on, I will just pass on the words of Ken Levine, the other genius who brought the 4077th into our lives.

When you turned in a script to Larry at 5:30 he called you at home to say he loved it… at 6:30. The first Rolaid hadn’t even dissolved in your stomach yet. Trust me, this is unheard of. But that was Larry. Empathetic, considerate, a mensch. He was the kindest man in an industry that seriously frowns on that sort of thing. Fortunately, he had the talent to overcome it.