It’s still hard to believe that it was on this day in 2004 that we lost Christopher Reeve.

Very few times in my life have I experienced the weight of that kind of loss. Losing a grandparent or aunt or uncle is one thing. Losing a beloved parent, or a spouse, or a sibling is of a different nature.

Christopher Reeve had been my boyhood hero, someone that I wanted to be like when I grew up. As Superman he was tall and built and confident, and you could hear it in his voice when he spoke on screen and off. So much so that from the time the first Superman film came out, I wanted to sound like him, and I deliberately trained my voice to sound similar to his.

Of course, I followed his career through the 1980s and 1990s whether on film or television, and most certainly through the Superman movies that followed. But when he suffered his accident in 1995, for a time I couldn’t watch the films. It just seemed impossible that someone who appeared larger than life could be injured and unable to move his entire body.

But then he made giant strides to regain his mobility and his life, even if it seemed like a snail’s pace at times. Writing, directing, and a return to acting were all part of who Reeve was, and in the process he found a new and greater purpose in his life. And after a time I found my way back to the Superman films once again.

All that changed on October 10, 2004.

I actually didn’t know that he had passed until the following morning when I drove to work and heard Paul Harvey say those words: “Superman is dead.” And my heart sank in a million pieces. I hadn’t felt that significant a loss since my dad’s death in 2002. And part of me wonders if people felt the same way when another famous Man of Steel, George Reeves, had died in 1959.

And there was only one thing that crossed my mind: call Jim.

My friend Jim Bowers had gotten to meet and know Reeve since the 1990s, and that night we talked and shared stories about Chris. Jim had even told me that Chris refused to see a print of the extended version of Superman IV, the memories of that time in his life still a painful one to remember or discuss.

But our generation still remembers. We still remember how a young man transformed himself into the embodiment of a hero on screen and off, and his impact on the superhero film genre is as big as is his mark on spinal cord research.