Two people told me in separate conversations last week that after 13 years as Charlotte's best-known sports radio talk-show host, Packer was leaving.

But radio is full of drama and sports are full of rumors and I was reluctant to believe. Monday made it official. Ratings were down, 'FNZ and Packer couldn't agree on a contract and Mark was gone.

I don't get to lie. So I acknowledge that I no longer was a regular listener. In related news, I hear that Mark long ago stopped reading the newspaper. Every time I turned on the show during football season I would hear a co-host, a former football player, talk about what he used to be.

So I knew what was coming. But when football ended I would have listened again.

There was a time you had to. When the station went to a sports talk format in 1997, Packer became an instant star. He's brash and loud and funny and smart and knowledgeable, and he made listeners feel as if they were part of something. Packer was throwing a party, and everybody got to come.

I worked with Mark as a co-host - in the pre-recession days he had two - for several years. We'd challenge each other on the air and off the air and he would attack the newspaper so I'd attack the radio station and he'd attack the radio station so, to avoid being left out, I'd attack the newspaper.

He pushed us, and he was good at it. We - a few of the other co-hosts - pushed back. We'd laugh and argue, and my friends would ask me why we spent so much time laughing and arguing, and I'd tell them it was because we could.

Sports were merely an excuse. Former President Jimmy Carter was in town for a book signing and he called into Primetime.

I was on that day. Think about it. One minute I'm listening to a caller complain about the lack of good games on television that weekend. The next, I'm talking to the former leader of the free world.

I was cheated, however, out of talking to the Godfather of Soul. I was driving home early one evening and Packer almost sent me into a ditch. James Brown, the real James Brown, was in the studio.

Charles Chandler, a friend who at the time covered the Panthers for the Observer, was in the studio with him.

No offense, Charles, but you should have been on with Barry Manilow or The Archies. In a just world, the Godfather of Soul was mine.

If you know Packer, you know he can be cantankerous and put-upon and self-righteous and, while we're at it, not averse to attention.

Yet when I was recovering from cancer the summer before last, he regularly e-mailed. Did I need anything?

I couldn't eat, and Packer knows more about milkshakes than I know about designer coffee, draft beer or chardonnay. He painstakingly told me where to go for the best shakes and which flavor to order and the best place to sit.

I had stopped working with him years before. Cancer is a nasty disease. He never seemed to mind.

Packer's strength is his respect for his audience. At public appearances, strangers would often approach timidly and walk away feeling as if they were his friend. He made them feel important. He gave them a voice.

The show worked for more than a decade because Packer understood the basics.

Know your listeners.

Respect your customers.

Take chances.

And always save a seat for the Godfather of Soul.