Whether that bushy beard, those one-liners, the beat up old car or good deeds quietly done, everyone has a Bob Healey memory or two.

The sad news came Monday that Mr. Cool Moose had passed away in his sleep the night before at the too-young age of 58. Attorney, businessman, school committee chairman and character, he was one of a kind.

Mr. Healey was best known as a perennial candidate for Rhode Island governor and lieutenant governor. He brought humor and insight to the debate, and voters are left now to wonder what might have been.

Candidate Healey caught most by surprise the first time or two. He didn’t look like any other candidate, nor did he sound like one … “Bob Healey for lieutenant governor. He won’t be there for you.”

He raised eyebrows and drew laughs but his campaigns were no joke. He cared deeply about Rhode Island, was bothered by the waste and corruption, and believed the little state could do so much better.

Why, for instance, does a broke state that can’t fix its bridges budget over a million dollars for a lieutenant governor whose only real job is to hang around lest some misfortune befall the governor.

“We don't need no stinkin' lieutenant governor,” he proclaimed, adding that, if elected, he’d work to abolish the office. That way, “I won't be able to give someone’s drunken, deadbeat brother-in-law a job or hire an idiot just because he or she is the son or daughter of some politically connected hack.”

He said startling things but there was no meanness to his message (more often than not he was the butt of his own jokes) — “If you like my ideas but not my face, just close your eyes and vote."

Mr. Healey struck a chord. In 2014 he ran for governor one last time, spent $38 on the campaign and won 22 percent of the vote. If he’d only spent $80, he quipped, he might have won.

And that might have given the Ocean State just the jolt it needed.