EDITORIAL:

Hard to picture them having lunch together.

They were that different.

Michael Conley was a Costa Mesa bar owner and frontman for the 1980s punk band MIA.

Norman Watson was a key player in expanding the Coast Community College District and was the founder of KOCE-TV.

Conley died under a cloud of questions in suburban Chicago late last month. He was 48.

Watson died of natural causes at 92 in late February, as well.

Both made the front page of the Daily Pilot in recent weeks.

Both made indelible marks on our community.

Conley, who raged against war, racism and the isolation of modern life on stage alongside other legendary acts in the 1980s such as the Dead Kennedys and Social Distortion, later became a champion for revitalizing the economy in Westside Costa Mesa as the owner of The Avalon Bar, a popular venue for Orange County DJs. He worked tirelessly to bring music and art to the Westside.

“We used to kid he was the mayor of Costa Mesa because everyone knew him,” said Jeff “Meatball” Tulinius, a longtime friend of Conley’s.

Watson took the reins as chancellor of the Coast Community College District in 1964 and served for 20 years. Orange Coast College’s former library, which opened in 1969, was known as the Norman E. Watson Library, and the campus names its new student services building after him in 2006.

“I think he had a vision for education that was not confined to four walls,” said Coast Community College District Trustee Jerry Patterson .

But to many, his greatest achievement was as founder of KOCE, which went on the air in November 1972 to offer television courses for students.

KOCE-TV now reaches an estimated 400,000 students a year from kindergarten through college with its televised courses, according to the station.

Michael Conley and Norman Watson. Hard to picture them having lunch together. Easy to see their legacies.