Why should the world care that Lenny Lublinski has died?

For most of his life, he was just another working stiff who found a way to get by. He was the guy you might have seen working a jackhammer during Boston’s Big Dig or wiping his brow at some other roadside construction site. Maybe you sat next to him on a flight to Amsterdam once or had a laugh with him on a beach in Morocco. Perhaps you might have bummed a cigarette from him late one night at North Station.

People like Lenny are not destined to become wealthy or famous, but they are likely to make a lot of friends and leave plenty of kindness behind as they move from city to city. And a lot of the time, people like Lenny — complicated, imperfect, big-hearted souls who are sometimes drawn to a drug that will numb their pain just for a short while — don’t live long lives or die surrounded by loving family members.

This month, they found his body in a studio apartment on the top floor of River House, a homeless shelter hard by the Bass River in Beverly, where he had lived for most of the past 15 years.

I met Lenny in 2004, after convincing an editor that I should spend a night in such a shelter and then write about the experience. Most of the guests were eager to tell their stories, and when I stepped outside to get some fresh air, I met a fast-talking, broad-shouldered guy with a New Jersey accent who was finishing a cigarette.

I wanted his take on life in the shelter, but he begged off. “I’m the black sheep of my family. Everyone else is successful,’’ he told me. I asked him if I could quote him and wanted to use his name. “Call me Lenny the Laborer,’’ he told me.

And then our small talk turned unexpectedly heavy and I realized that he had plenty of reasons to be angry at life, and with people. Lenny was born in Sweden, a Yiddish-speaking child in a country far from Eastern Europe, where his parents had lived. They somehow had survived Auschwitz, made a short stop in Sweden, then moved to the Bronx and New Jersey, where Lenny picked up English as a kid.

After high school, Lenny did some relocating of his own, finding solace in Europe and Morocco, where he lived for many years.

He worked odd jobs, did landscaping and construction work, and didn’t mind sleeping on a sofa for months on end.

He offered up a handshake, scrawled his cellphone number in my notebook, and stamped out his cigarette butt. “This is a good place,’’ he told me that night. “They do a lot of good here.’’

For years we talked about getting together for coffee, and then one fall I invited him for a Rosh Hashana dinner. He arrived with a smile, accompanied by Anne Strong, who helped run the Beverly shelter. “I gotta call my mom and tell her I’m here,’’ he said excitedly, and stepped outside on my porch.

That night he told stories of Sweden, of picking grapes in southern France, of his travels through Morocco. He insisted on wearing a yarmulke, sipped wine, complimented my wife on her chicken soup, and smiled the entire evening — from the gefilte fish to the brisket and all the way to the pound cake.

I also smiled a lot that night. Was he not just like a member of my family? He looked like a cousin, ate like a brother, and talked and gestured like a long-lost relative.

After that, I’d find a bottle of wine at my doorstep before Passover every year, and it was a sign that Lenny had stopped by. Why didn’t I invite him again for another meal? Hadn’t I enjoyed his company?

I guess the best I could do was offer him some yard work. Once, I asked him about the Nazis and their impact on his family. “I don’t know,’’ he said. After a long silence, he told me he wasn’t bitter or angry with anyone. “I don’t judge people, and I’m no victim,’’ he said.

After Lenny died at age 62, I learned that his heart had given out.

His friends, Nadine, Scotty, Kate, and Anne, told long stories about how generous he had been. Anyone who needed a ride, or a cup of coffee, or a couple of bucks could count on Lenny.

When the shelter needed a good-will ambassador to talk to politicians about homeless people, Lenny had stepped forward.

When a longtime homeless man was dying at the shelter, Lenny had helped organize a 24-hour hospice.

After the man died, Lenny helped push the gurney out into the fresh air.

“Give him a car, a cellphone, and a half-pack of smokes,’’ his pal Scotty told me last week, “and he would have gone anywhere he needed to be comfortable, and he would have made sure his friends were, too.’’

Our society suggests that it’s best to present our idealized self when we meet someone new or post something on Facebook. But Lenny understood that it’s best to be yourself.

It didn’t always help him, but in this world where everyone seems a little broken, he seemed comfortable with his fate and his small community of friends.

Lenny the Laborer did not cure cancer or make a million bucks, but he made a connection with people, and really cared.

That’s about all anyone could ask from a friend.

E-mail Steven A. Rosenberg at srosenberg@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @WriteRosenberg.