Several years ago a woman I had never met greeted me with the question: "Are you one of the Paul boys who grew up in Mercer?"

"I am", I responded, eager to discover what lay behind her inquiry.

"How many of you were there?" she continued.

"Just two of us" I replied, "my brother and me."

She looked at me skeptically and added: "I seemed to remember there were a whole bunch of you Paul boys."

I chuckled to myself at her implication, but it got me thinking about my life when Mercer was more than just my hometown. Mercer was my world, my universe. It was my birthplace, where I started to school, first made friends, roamed its tree-lined streets and where as a child I lived a mostly idyllic existence.

In 1946, when I was almost 12, our family moved to Pittsburgh. As our car headed south on Route 19, I cried in grief at leaving. While the move to the city expanded my horizons and marked the beginning of a new life adventure, I've never forgotten my Mercer years.

I've passed through Mercer from time to time, but seldom stopped. Once I toured the renovated court house. On another occasion I took my three adult sons for a walk-through to point out the significant landmarks of my childhood.

Then, providentially and after 63 years, I reconnected with two Mercer residents who had been influential during my early years. Roberta was my third- and fourth-grade teacher. Helen was the personal secretary of the school principal whose office I visited more than once. They were active members of my father's congregation and close friends of our family. Now in their 90s, both are still keen in mind and memory. We agreed to meet to share memories of Mercer during the 1940s.

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To prepare for our reunion I identified the names of more than a hundred persons about whom I remained curious. While most of the people are long-gone, my list included names of school chums, neighbors, family friends, town professionals, shop proprietors, teachers, school administrators and members of our home church.

Our time together stimulated our collective recall of people and places. Both women responded to my queries: "Is he still living?" "How do you remember her?" "Where do they live now?" Their remembrances often corrected my youthful impressions. I was amazed at the amount of retrievable information still stored in our minds.

My post-meeting reflection revealed an unbroken tie between those early days and now. While I hope my values have broadened and deepened during the intervening years, their foundations were definitely laid in childhood. A case in point is the importance of good parenting. That I had two parents who were faithful to each other, who cared, nurtured, even sacrificed for us, and who dispensed discipline with firmness laced with love informs my current self-awareness.

My continuing sports passion began in Mercer. As kids we played baseball all spring and summer. In winter we played basketball in a barn with the hoop a bottomless tin bucket nailed 10 feet up on the barn wall. Mercer varsity athletes were our heroes and we dreamed of the day when we would take their place.

It was also then that I felt the first stirrings of sexual awakening. By then the girls our age were changing in appearance and were increasingly reluctant to participate in the rough and tumble games of childhood. This awakening signaled the beginning of a life-long journey of appreciation for the marvel and mystery of opposite gender attraction.

Love of country also began in those years. With World War II always looming in the background, patriotic feelings were inevitable and irresistible. Young Mercer men were inducted and went off to fight. Some never returned.

In my naivete I believed Mercer's broom factory made it a prime target for the enemy. I became a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Junior Commando, gathered scrap metal for the war effort and hauled it in my wagon to the collecting point behind the Liberty Theater across from Isaly's. Our boyhood cap-pistol war games were played out on the courthouse lawn and around its four stately porches.

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The sharing of memories with Roberta and Helen cemented a sense that each stage of life is profoundly connected to the others. Shakespeare was right: "The past is prologue."

If we are to understand our present we must recover the meaning of our past. For those of us in our later years that may be our primary task if we want to continue emerging and growing as people to the end. When our current life chapter is informed by our memories, we are better equipped and more likely to live into the future with courage, joy and hope.

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.