Laton Hebert has gone to his great reward, and the world made little of his passing. But that matters not.

What matters is the celebration that is happening beyond the Pearly Gates. Laton Hebert was the maintenance man at The Town Talk for 43 years, and I’ve got to believe that Saint Peter has documentation to show that not a day passed when he went to work that he didn’t bring a smile to at least one face. Countless times to a whole lot of faces.

In my 39 years at the local newspaper, I don’t think anyone was able to lift people’s spirits daily as much as Laton. Some people take a vitamin each day; I settled for a daily dose of Laton Hebert. He was the picture of joy – friendly, engaging, smiling, singing. Never complaining. Seriously. He never complained.

I never heard him complain about anyone and anything. Well, maybe he complained about the heat once or twice. When it was 100-plus degrees.

He made anyone he met feel special – not with superficial compliments but simply by taking an interest in you. A warm hello. A smile. Maybe a little rhyming ditty he’d ad-lib about you that was spot on and disarming.

“And, oh, he could sing!” said his Town Talk boss Joe Blackwell as we traded stories about him during the visitation at Annadale Baptist Church.

That’s where Laton and I really connected. He liked the old ballads from the Fifties and Sixties and sometimes, late at night when not many employees were around to be disturbed, we’d croon together a verse or two from, say, “Moon River” or “Only You” or “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

I know it doesn’t fit the stereotypes. A white guy and a black man singing together. At work. In a newspaper office. The hot breath of a deadline inhaled while he exhaled.

Laton treated his job, regardless how menial others might regard it, as a gift. He didn’t preach, but he evangelized, mostly by his actions and reactions. The biblical admonition “Do unto others …” evidently was written on his heart and he took it seriously.

As a result, you’d get the feeling he cared about you and so you naturally cared about him. You’d appreciate his joy and find that, regardless of how down in the dumps you might’ve been five minutes ago, you felt better after a visit with him.

And it had a ripple effect. He’d throw a pebble in the pond with a smile or a song, and instead of whining about an assignment with a co-worker, you were sharing a joke or a story about your son’s rare base hit on his birthday.

And so, for a while, the world became a better place because of the maintenance man.

When I viewed him in his open casket, I hardly recognized him. The affable bear I’d known looked old and thin and the curves had become angles. He was 88, after all. I turned away and took a seat in a pew in the back and tried to forget the image I’d just seen.

I brought back to mind the man I’d known and, yes, loved.

And I thanked God for Laton Hebert and his legacy of living the Golden Rule. Not just now and then. But day by day. Year by year.

I feel certain the welcome he heard on the other side was “Well done, good and faithful servant.”