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It's still so vivid in my mind. It was an afternoon in early September back in 2002. At the time, the Town Crier was located on Lowell Street in Wilmington. I walked into the building one day and collected my mail (back then people would submit articles on pieces of paper). In the pile of mail was a pink piece of paper, with a message for me to call someone named Mike Ippolito, who was interested in a writing position.

I walked up the stairs to my office and made that phone call. Mike answered and told me that he had a background in sportswriting and recently moved to this area. Mike's enthusiasm for sports, for writing and for the opportunity to write for the Town Crier made it impossible not to give him a chance.

Immediately Mike was a fit with the company. He worked here for about six months before we met in person, which is always a fun story to share. His stories were fantastic from day one. He wrote from his heart. People absolutely loved him and his work. He had a different writing style, but that's what made him such an incredible sportswriter. His ability to build up stories and events were second to none.

From that first conversation — until last Monday's phone call from Mike's brother-in-law informing me that Mike had unexpectedly passed away — was 20 years of friendship that I'll always cherish and hold very close to my own heart.

Mike was a great friend.

He was one of my closest and dearest friends.

And now over a matter of days, this great friend went from watching over my stories to find mistakes, to watching over all of us from his new home in heaven.

We are all so heartbroken.

Mike was as genuine as they come. He was so laid-back, caring, so easy-going, funny and just had a way about him that made life so enjoyable. He truly was a family man, who loved and adored his wife Lisa and their children Michael and Adam so much. Their achievements in life, their funny stories, were things Mike truly treasured and enjoyed sharing.

Throughout my 20 years with Mike, the majority of our time was spent on the phone or through computers with thousands and thousands and thousands of emails, texts and phone calls. We would see each other a handful of times each year, mostly when I asked him to double up on an assignment with me, or occasionally I would convince him that it was time for us to meet out for a beer and a plate of nachos.

Our friendship was much more than work related. Way back in the early years, Mike and Lisa set me up on a date. After that came surprise birthday parties, fantasy baseball and football leagues, other get-togethers and my wedding. I'll always remember him sharing the news to me that Adam was several months away from entering this world, and I know he always remembered me sharing the news that my wife Julie and I were traveling to Tennessee to adopt our twin girls, Lennox and Teagan.

Mike and his brother Frank shared Patriots season tickets for the past 28 years. Almost every year, Mike would sell a pair of tickets to me and whenever I went over to his house to give him the money and grab the tickets, we would just talk and talk and I'd always be late for wherever I had to be next.

As an employee, Mike wrote thousands and thousands of stories about thousands and thousands of athletes. He covered hundreds of games and other sporting events. He built countless friendships along the way, which was evident with the showings at his services over the weekend.

Over his 20 years, he was “Mr. Shawsheen Tech”. He covered all of the teams every week, writing countless team and feature stories. Besides his love for the Rams, Mike did so much for the Wilmington and Tewksbury communities as well. In the fall and winter seasons, he would spend either Friday nights or Saturday mornings/afternoons at the football fields and during the winter it was Friday nights at the basketball courts and Saturdays at the ice hockey rinks or at wrestling meets. During the spring, it was trips to the local tennis and lacrosse courts and fields. On top of that, he wrote college round-ups and feature stories, and highlighted athletes from other schools and covered road races and summer events.

Mike covered the 1,000 yard rushers and the state champion wrestlers, but truthfully his better written stories were ones about the kids who didn't bring home a medal every week. He thrived to write about those athletes.

I'll never forgot all of the games that we attended together. We were together for five state hockey championship team titles! The last one, this past March with Tewksbury, was the last time I saw Mike.

We were also at Gillette Stadium three times together and enjoyed one Super Bowl title.

The list could go on and on.

Most of those times, Mike would bring his boys with him. Whether it was the press boxes up at the Fleet Center or the sidelines of the football games, Michael and Adam spent countless afternoons with their father, soaking up a sportswriter's life and creating memories that they will have for the rest of their lives.

Besides all of that, Mike would fill in for me. If I couldn't make a big game, he was there. Just this past June, my daughters had their dance recital on the same day as the Tewksbury High School Softball team was playing in the state championship game. I asked him if he would take a ride to UMass-Amherst to cover the game. As always, his response was “sure, no problem.”

If I went on vacation, he did everything and I never had to worry. Mike always took care of everything. If it was editing my stories, helping me out with research or taking on additional stories at 11 pm on a Tuesday night because I was behind, he did it.

Over the past 20 years, every Tuesday night has been incredibly difficult and stressful. All of our writing has to be done by Wednesday morning in order for me to paginate the pages in time so the paper can get printed and you all get it in your mailboxes on time. Mike and I strived to put out the best product we could, all while meeting deadline each and every week.

If my math is correct, we did about 1,000 of those stressful Tuesday nights together, or maybe it was in the 900 range if you subtract vacations and some of the slower weeks, but you get the picture.

Mike wrote so much, that almost every Tuesday night, he would send me an email just before midnight to tell me he was going to sleep for 2-to-3 hours, then he would wake up and write the other two or three stories that were on his list for that week.

I would get those Wednesday morning stories and immediately start paginating the pages. He would then go off to his full-time job as an Operations Manager at a local law firm, and on a slow day, he would get ten emails or texts from me with questions, or requests to help me with something.

Mike's devotion and loyalty to this newspaper was never doubted for one second.

Mike was also quite the repair man – not like the guy who comes to your house to fix a hole in your wall, but over the past decade-plus, he was the repair man of my own relationships. I can count seven or eight times, including just recently in June, when Mike had to repair a broken relationship that I had with a local coach or school administrator, who didn't like something I wrote. Mike repaired that relationship, all while taking on another team to cover during for that season(s), all because of something that I had done.

By far, to me, Mike's best quality was listening. He'd take the assignments every week and they would get done. He would listen during the interviews and catch something little that the person said and turn that into a story that made everyone proud. He would listen to me vent – all of the time about happenings with this job. And each time, it was Mike who would steer me in the right direction on how to handle a tough situation with a coach, parent or even another co-worker. I would bounce ideas off of him all of the time and more often than not, I'd take his advice and later thank him for not allowing me to follow through with my ill-advised idea.

Through the 20 years, I never, ever got upset at him. He got upset at me once when I changed one his stories around and after a few days, that incident became something that we laughed about time after time.

Mike had a great laugh. And I certainly will miss that.

I will miss so much about Mike Ippolito.

I have a lot of figuring out to do here at the Town Crier with his absence but I'll answer those questions at a later date. Until then I just want to honor him in as many ways possible.

I think he deserves that.

I know he deserves that.

I've been so honored to have Mike as one of my closest friends for the past 20 years. It all started with a pink piece of paper which turned into the new guy in town making such an impact of so many lives for two-decades. Especially mine.

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