The first call came last Friday night.

Judy Laskewitz has never called me before, but she did that night. Then came another call from Larry Tompkins.

By then I knew the impact of what had happened.

Esther Wiste called, too, that night. I’ve never gotten a call from her either. On Saturday morning, Jim Sathre called me. Then, Jim Bartlett. Then, Lou Beckel.

Over and over again the news was bad: Tom Mullenbach was dead at 65.

“Tommy” as everyone called him, was the kind of guy, who when asked whether he would catch a fly ball in a baseball game or open a door for a blind man would always choose opening the door for a blind man even if there was a man on third base and the score tied in the bottom of the ninth.

He was put on earth for a purpose and there was a reason they called him “Saint Thomas.”

Helping others is what he did best in life, and he did a lot of it. More privately, than publicly, Larry Tompkins, a close friend, said. Despite a certain newspaper reporter writing about his acts of kindness and poking fun at him, he much preferred anonymity.

When I close my eyes, I see a large man, wearing a baseball cap, salt-and-pepper whiskers on his face and his mouth fixed in a grin.

Whether he was sitting on a bar stool at the Legion or sitting at a table at Bubbles’ Cafe enjoying a slice of his favorite pie, he was the same.

Or in my mind’s eye I see him in a wheelchair, being pushed down the streets of the nation’s capitol by Jim Sathre.

I remember him struggling to get into a tuxedo before the Jefferson Awards for Public Service banquet in Washington, D.C., where the high and the mighty invited him. This was America’s Royal Family, the Kennedys at work, and they would share the stage with an American original: Tommy. Never has a man looked more uncomfortable in a tuxedo.

He was the same man wherever he went, whatever the crowd: An ordinary guy, who did extraordinary things.

Them Adams Folks — Pork Chop and Weasel were the ringleaders — went to work to get me there to write about Tommy’s 15 minutes of fame. Once again, I was in their debt. It was a privilege I won’t forget, being a part of Tommy’s entourage, but there was another occasion that made me understand more of Tommy’s affect on people.

I was on the receiving end of one of them in 2001, when a benefit was held at American Legion Post No. 146 in Adams.

That’s all I can say about that without getting too emotional.

I still don’t understand why he — and many others, to be sure — did that for me: I was just a reporter doing my job, writing about as much of greater Mower County that I could reach.

Them Adams Folks sure know how to complicate a man’s life in the nicest of ways.

The day before his funeral Wednesday, I called Jim Kiefer and we talked about Tommy. “He used to sit across from me every day in city hall,” Kiefer said of his close friend.

I could tell the funeral was going to be one to remember and it was.

Father James Seitz gave the perfect message, calling Tommy “good company” that made any trip more enjoyable, any diastase shorter in life.

Bette Schmitz was eloquent in her eulogy, too.

I never heard so much laughter at a funeral as I did at Tommy’s.

Of course, I imagine there were tears falling down cheeks, too.

At both the funeral dinner and the Legion, there were plenty of Tommy stories.

The Boes, the Bergenes, the Andersons, Jim Bartlett and Clio Osmundson, too.

Jim and Connie Sathre, Heimers, Lewisons, everyone.

Cousin Monica Mullenbach dropped by our table, too. Then, Gerald Meier.

People came and went. It was more like a celebration than anything else.

A celebration of a man’s life rather than his absence.

Somebody joked that Tommy himself would have been restless hearing all the things said about him at the Mass, and I believed it.

Personally, I don’t know how he fit into the casket. With the heart as big as the one he had, it must have been tight.

Back to last weekend, when the news of Tommy’s death came.

It ended the way it started: A phone call and a brief discussion about Tommy’s passing.

It was Jack Thill calling from Florida, where he and Chuck Wilson and their Austin friends are working on their tans this winter.

Considering how much Messrs. Thill and Wilson do for others, what one of them had to say was especially noteworthy.

“I knew Tommy Mullenbach. Everybody did. He’s going to be missed,” Thill said.

For me that started when I got the first phone call last Friday night and I don’t expect it to forever completely go away.

Dorothy Johnson said it best: “Guess he really is a saint now.”