A couple of months ago, when SeaTac Mayor Ralph Shape announced that Councilman Joe Brennan was in the hospital, I shrugged.

Joe's always in the hospital. The paramedics arrive with lights flashing, load Joe into the van and rush him to the hospital. The doctors replace some body parts, sew him back up, and he bounces back.

This year, hadn't he been to the hospital 19 times? The firefighters love him and feel they are his caretakers, but even they began joking that he was wearing out the aid car.

People call him the Bionic Man.

But it began to feel different this time. He regularly missed council meetings. Once, when he did attend, Joe gingerly left right after the meeting began with the fire chief and police chief protectively flanking him.

He loved serving on the council.

After all, this is the guy who complained bitterly when his fellow lawmakers voted to scale back council meetings from weekly to every two weeks.

So it was shocking, but not a total surprise, when Shape somberly announced at the Oct. 14 council meeting that Joe had died that afternoon.

Here is what I know about Joe Brennan after covering SeaTac for the past eight years:

As his colleagues have testified, Joe was very smart, very knowledgeable and very committed to the city.

But most important for a reporter sitting through countless council meetings, he was colorful.

Not surprisingly, the first time I interviewed Joe, he was in a hospital bed. The new control tower at Sea-Tac International Airport was about to be dedicated. Joe, with the help of then-Port commissioner Paul Schell, had designed it so it had a public face toward International Boulevard and the city, too. Joe explained how they had drawn up the plan on a napkin.

A former fire commissioner and volunteer fireman (his family says he loved driving the tiller of the ladder truck,) Joe was fiercely loyal to the fire department.

His fellow lawmaker and senior citizen, Frank Hansen, was a curmudgeon when it came to the fire budget. Joe liked to tell Hansen that the firefighters might not be as quick to come to Hansen's aid as they were for him.

The very chic Mayor Shirley Thompson tried to maintain decorum, but she just sighed when it came Joe's turn to give his "council comments."

"Can I tell a joke? Joe would ask.

The one I remember is, "If God meant us to be vegetarians, he wouldn't have made animals out of meat."

Speaking of animals, Joe was cranky about proposed salmon habitat restrictions mandated for the city. So, he brought to a council meeting one of those ugly singing-fish trophy plaques. He proceeded to play it several times, much to the chagrin of Mayor Thompson.

A fellow council member complained that I always quoted Joe to the exclusion of other members.

"What can I do? I replied. "Joe is a quote machine."

Joe got upset when Port of Seattle officials mentioned that there was a very remote possibility that a runway might be extended into Des Moines Creek Park.

He reminded them that SeaTac and others had been pouring money into park environmental improvements "since Jesus was a little boy."

Joe then remarked to the startled staffers, "If your word is as good as your bond, I wouldn't want to be your bonding agent."

The guy didn't prepare these kinds of comments beforehand-they just came out.

But I do remember a time when Joe's jokes and colorful quotes were mostly muted.

Joe had just been elected deputy mayor for the second time. Then, the mayor resigned after being charged with defrauding an elderly neighbor. Joe became mayor and, shortly after that, a council member committed suicide.

He guided the council through a rocky time and with new blood, the council regained its bearings.

That's the way it goes.

Old leaders disappear and other residents step forward to govern their city.

In my line of work, I hear a lot of complaints about politicians.

But on the level I cover, I encounter a lot of citizen-politicians like Joe who are not the most polished or the most slick but are dedicated to doing the right thing.

They are what democracy is all about.