By the time I was dialing into the conference call with Mitt Romney last Friday, I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to run for president again.

No sane person would want to put themselves and their family through that incredible ordeal three times.

I’ve known Mitt since I had breakfast at the Park Plaza Hotel with him and Ann back in the fall of 1993. Then-Gov. Bill Weld had asked me to meet with “a very interesting guy” who was thinking of running against then Sen. Ted Kennedy. The reason for the meeting was to see if I could help.

I remember telling Mitt that no one could beat Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts. “He could run down five nuns outside a church driving blind drunk at noon on Good Friday and he would still win easily here,” I said.

Mitt laughed that great chuckle of his and said, “Well, somebody ought to try and we’ve talked it over and I think I’m going to do it. Will you join us?”

So that’s when his political career started. I was thinking about that meeting as he was talking with us on last Friday’s conference call as his political career was ending.

He was gracious as usual: thanking all of us for what we had done for him. He was always thanking us. Ann spoke and sounded very happy. Then they were off to the next conference call with the big donors to tell them the news.

After the call, I thought about Mitt and something that happened during the 2012 convention in Tampa, Florida when he was nominated as the Republican Party’s candidate for president of the United States.

I was running into a meeting at one of the hotels when I saw some folks wearing cowboy hats. They were members of the Texas Delegation who traditionally wore their matching cowboy hats to at least one of the nights of the convention. I had to go over and say howdy.

When they heard I was from Massachusetts, they said, “Tell us about Mitt Romney. We don’t know all that much about him.”

So I told them stories about Mitt.

I told them that Mitt always gives money to panhandlers. And not just a buck. He gives them ten or twenty dollars. And when I asked him why, he told me about the time he was working overseas for his church in Marseille, France. And he went into a home where the people were so poor they barely had any clothes for their children. And how he ran back to where he was staying and got all his money. And how he went up and down the streets trying to find the house again. And when he couldn’t find them, he was haunted forever by that memory. And so he always gives money to panhandlers.

And I told them about when I went out to Salt Lake City with Mitt, when the folks out there were begging him to save the 2002 Olympics. Day after day we were gathering information. There had been a major international scandal. There was a huge deficit. And worst of all, the people there had lost faith that it could ever be brought back on track. I remember saying to him, “This is a big mess. Even you can’t fix this. Why don’t we get on the plane and head back to Boston?” And Mitt just smiled and said, “I think I can do it and I really want to try.” The rest was history. He did turn it all around. It was a proud moment for our country, the first major event in the world after 9/11, and it ended up with a $50 million surplus.

And I told them about when my sweet mother passed away. And how the line was so long at the wake because so many people wanted to pay their respects. And Mr. Thomas, who ran the funeral home in our little town came up and said, “Governor and Mrs. Romney are waiting in the line. And I keep telling them that all the politicians usually cut the line and just walk right in but they won’t do it.” And how Mitt and Ann waited their turn, then spent another hour talking with all the members of my family and everyone else who was there at the wake.

And I kept telling the Texans stories about Mitt and I noticed as I went on, that the crowd around me kept getting bigger and bigger. And finally one of the delegates said, “Why don’t we know all of this about Mitt Romney?”

And I thought that’s a really good question. If folks who were delegates to our own convention didn’t know about Mitt, who he was and all the great things he had accomplished that would have made him a good president, then the regular voters around the country sure didn’t know. And the Romney for President Campaign was in big trouble.

Of course, that’s what happened. The Obama campaign was able to paint Mitt in a totally negative light. And the Romney campaign couldn’t or wouldn’t tell the American people who Mitt was, what he had done and what he would do for them.

So after the conference call, I was running to a meeting through the freezing, icy and snow covered streets of Boston thinking about Mitt and how it was finally and definitely over for him. That he would never again hold political office. And what a shame that was.

Charley Manning, who has worked as a Republican political consultant, is a friend of Mitt Romney.