Mark PatinkinProvidence Journal
Tom Mulligan’s final day among us tells you a lot about who he was.
That morning, he played a sport he loved, pickleball in his case, near his Providence home, and that night, he left us.
He was 73, and my friend.
It was a complication from esophageal cancer, a diagnosis arriving only months ago that devastated those who knew him, but Tom took it with grace and simply kept living each of his days.
I’m writing about Tom for two reasons.
He was among the first colleagues I connected with at The Providence Journal in the late 1970s. He was also one of the best men I’ve known, a great achiever who never flaunted it and somehow was always upbeat, forever seeing life with a wry smile.
He was especially that way around his wife, Irene Wielawski, another past Journal colleague of mine. They had 46 years together.
They were the kind of couple where he talked only a little and Irene a lot, which amused him to no end. When Irene would begin to hold court, whether back in the 1970s or when I shared recent dinners with them, Tom would give me a glance, and that same smile.
He couldn’t have loved her more.
She felt the same about him.
They figured it out pretty quickly, meeting as newly hired Providence Journal reporters at tryouts for the annual Newspaper Guild Follies show. The next morning at 8 a.m. Irene’s phone rang.
“This is Tom Mulligan,” said Tom Mulligan. “We met last night. Would you be available for breakfast?”
Irene was very much available, but felt a lady should demur, so she told him, “Just a moment, let me check my calendar.”
It turned out she was free, and days later – yes, it was one of those – they knew they were going to get married.
But Irene feared it was uncool to be dating a Providence Journal colleague, so they kept it on the down low, until the Newport Daily News blew their cover with a random front-page photo of the two of them hand-in-hand.
“Lovers walk down snowy lane,” the caption said.
Irene freaked out, but Tom laughed and assured her everything would be fine, which pretty much became their dynamic over the decades as they navigated careers, kids and life.
“He was my strength,” she told me this week, adding that Tom might not like such a sensitive phrase being shared publicly, since he wasn’t the emotional type, but it’s true, so wherever you are, Tom, you’ll have to roll with it.
Usually, stories like this extol the career achievements of the departed in the first paragraph or two, but I’ve waited until this point because Tom never talked about his résumé.
“He was allergic to praise,” Irene said.
But he had quite the career – going from Providence Journal reporter and business editor to assistant business editor at the Los Angeles Times. Eventually, Tom missed being a writer, so he returned to it as that paper’s chief financial correspondent in New York, which put him in the era’s major stories, including 9/11, Enron and Katrina.
Yet Tom Mulligan also felt the importance of providing for family, so he finished his career in the corporate realm at a communications firm that helped companies through crises. But Tom liked that ride, too, seeing the inside of a world he’d spent decades covering from the outside.
In 2021, after he retired, Tom and Irene realized their hearts had always been in Providence, so they moved back to where it began for them, settling on the East Side. They felt they had come home.
It’s true what I said about Tom being unflappable while Irene, by her own admission, was the flappable one, but in one particular area, even-keeled Tom often got vocally, even loudly emotional.
Let me explain it with an anecdote.
In 2004, Tom was stationed by the L.A. Times in Baghdad to write about Iraq’s reconstruction, except it turned out not to be "post war" after all, as Americans were still being routinely targeted. The security scene there was a mess, and so was Irene back home.
One night, her phone rang at 3 a.m. Immediately, she dreaded the worst.
Except it was Tom, and he was ecstatic, shouting to her from Baghdad that the Red Sox were going to win the World Series, having just clinched the pennant.
“You almost gave me a heart attack,” Irene said. “You’re calling me at 3 a.m. to tell me that?”
“Well,” explained Tom, “I had to tell somebody.”
The sports thing, Irene said, was a bit of a mismatch, but that did not stop Tom from once taking her and their two kids, Andrew and Emily, to a Red Sox game against the Los Angeles Angels in Anaheim as an allegedly selfless Mother’s Day gift.
Yet theirs was a great professional match, Irene having had quite a career as a medical writer for The Providence Journal, the L.A. Times and many other outlets.
Tom grew up as the son of an airline pilot in a big Irish family of eight brothers and sisters in Milton, Massachusetts, where his funeral was held last Tuesday.
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It was a beautiful but wrenching service, having to say goodbye to a vibrant man who left us too young. The town’s St. Pius X Church was filled with friends and Mulligans as Tom’s four young grandchildren, along with other family, followed the casket to the sound of a bagpiper outside.
Toward the end of the ceremony, Tom’s 41-year-old son, Andrew, stepped to the lectern to give a remembrance. I was struck by how much father and son looked alike, including their height, though Andrew joked that he was an inch taller than his 6-foot-4 dad, an increment Tom had fun trying to deny.
Andrew spoke of how his dad’s humor was designed to make others laugh – even his caregivers at the end, in often goofy ways, to the vexation of Irene.
But Andrew, after pausing to collect himself, said he will always remember his folks together.
“It was Tom and Irene, and Irene and Tom,” he said.
Andrew then told the church what Irene had told me – his dad wasn’t the emotional type, but his stoicism proved to be a rock for the family.
Irene would later say her husband's stoicism did not mean he was strict. Tom would often let the kids stay up an extra hour while Irene countered that it was a school night.
“He’d spoil them, and I had to rein them back in,” she told me.
Those of us in the days-of-yore Providence Journal family were thrilled when Irene and Tom moved back to Providence a few years ago.
Now retired, Tom spent hours a day reading – newspapers, the New Yorker and novels. As an English major at Bowdoin, he had long wanted to write one, so during the last few years, he got a master's in fine arts in creative writing and began crafting short stories.
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Irene and Tom loved walking Providence to take in the architecture and the vibe, as well as movies at the Avon. They’d march up the city’s steep streets, Tom encouraging a complaining Irene not to rest until they'd reached the top. He liked ordering carryout Korean chicken from Den Den more often than Irene preferred, but he explained his life philosophy: If you like something, why not have it again?
At times over these last few years, I played mixed doubles tennis with them. Tom would compliment his wife with his nickname for her, a play on her last name.
“Not a bad shot, Wielaw,” he’d say.
You could see his nature on the court – even keel, often with that wry smile, but he went after everything.
That’s the same Tom who played pickleball on his last morning – because, despite what life throws your way, he felt you should keep living it.
Tom did.
And in so doing, enriched the lives of all who loved him, and were lucky enough to know him.
mpatinki@providencejournal.com
