You may have read that astronomers are urging that the planet Pluto be downgraded from its status as planet to "trans-Neptunian object" or "orbiting iceball" because, well, that's what it is.

This downgrading may not matter much to you. But it matters plenty to me, because it would downgrade the most exciting meeting I ever had.

I have interviewed or stood close to some impressive movers and shakers -- presidents, archbishops, authors, rock stars, athletes and CEOs. But the most fabulous achiever I ever talked to was a humble fellow named Clyde Tombaugh. It was Tombaugh who proved, in 1930, that there was something awfully planetary way out there, 3.5 billion miles from the sun.

I was the main writer for the Unitarian Universalist World in 1988, and was assigned to do a profile of Tombaugh. I caught up with him at his observatory in New Mexico. It was instantly clear that Tombaugh didn't hold much by reporters, or even Unitarians. But he didn't have a mean bone in him, so we talked.

Famed astronomer Percival Lowell predicted years earlier that an unknown "Planet X" was out there. Young Tombaugh, 23, was one of several observers putting in long hours, and crunching mega-numbers, without the help of any computer, to find it. He was using an astronomical camera called a blink comparator. It took pictures at intervals and looked for unusual objects -- and found something.

Now Tombaugh had the data in hand, but he needed to confirm it via the telescope. But the skies were overcast. To kill time until the clouds parted, he plunked down twenty cents at a Flagstaff moviehouse to watch Gary Cooper in The Virginian (1929).

This early talkie was noteworthy for its salty dialogue. In a famous scene, a poker opponent tells Cooper, "When I want to know anything from you, I'll tell you, you long-legged son of a bitch."

This was sizzling stuff in those days -- the only other film star anyone said that to then was Mickey's dog.

Cooper's steely response: "If you want to call me that -- smile."

Tombaugh watched the western, particularly the gunfight scene, in an agony of apprehension. It wasn't until the next night that he and two colleagues stood at the lens of the Lowell Observatory telescope and viewed "Planet X" for the first time with human eyes.

This was sixty-nine years ago this Thursday -- February 18, 1930.

He found the tiny dot in the skies after only a year and 40,000 blink comparator shots. In so doing he became the only individual in the 20th century -- the only person since J.C. Galle discovered Neptune in 1846 and William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781 -- to locate a whole new world.

The new world was named Pluto by Tombaugh and the other Lowell astronomers, after first considering Chronos -- some say the first two letters are an homage to Percival Lowell. Pluto, named after the dark region of death, and its slightly smaller moon, the dismal boatman Charon, are very likely two rounded, gaseous icebergs bobbing through the nether regions of space.

"One thing that makes them interesting is that Charon is nearly as big around as Pluto," Tombaugh said. "And they are close together in space -- 25,000 miles -- almost like a twin-yolked egg. Those are unique characteristics."

I asked Tombaugh, after all the years had passed, what it felt like to discover a planet. "Nice," was all he said. The immensity of the universe, he added, taught him many lessons, not least being the poverty of mere words to encapsulate it.

Within astronomy, Tombaugh is probably more celebrated for the sheer volume of his discoveries and output. The prevailing view is that his discovery of an 1,800-galaxy star supercluster is more important all by itself, and that a lifetime of discoveries of galactic star clusters, asteroids, and observations of the Moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn have yielded much, much more in terms of human knowledge.

It was announced at that time, too, that a planetoid object until then known only as Minor Planet 1604 (1931 FH), one of dozens of asteroids discovered by Tombaugh during his sojourns in he stars, had been named and registered as Tombaugh in his honor.

Tombaugh's comment: "Finally, a piece of real estate no one can touch."

In the past year, astronomers have duplicated Tombaugh's feat, locating definite planets in other solar systems. But no one ever found another one in ours. Indeed, there is a move afoot to bust his little planet all the way to trans-Neptunian iceball.

Tombaugh died a year ago in January, without an enemy on this world. But he was my personal connection to Newton, Copernicus, and -- Unitarian or not -- to the gods. And I liked him.

Iceball? If you want to call it that to me -- smile.

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