Longtime quarterbacks coach Tom Martinez, known for mentoring Tom Brady, died Tuesday on his 67th birthday.

It’s a loss felt by the Martinez family: his wife, Olivia; son, Tom Jr.; and daughters, Linda and Lisa. But also by the San Mateo sports community, where Martinez was a revered figure.

Martinez’s health had declined primarily due to complications from diabetes. He was awaiting word on a kidney transplant at the time of his death, which reportedly was from a heart attack suffered during a dialysis session.

He had gained a fair amount of national publicity in recent years due to his work with Brady. Martinez had tutored Brady and guided him in his development as a quarterback throughout high school and college. After Brady made it big with the New England Patriots, he would still check in with Martinez for semiregular tuneup sessions whenever he felt he needed a mechanical or mental adjustment.

Personally, I knew Tom Martinez before any of the national attention came about. Covering his College of San Mateo football teams back in the 1980s, I was immediately struck by Martinez, the person.

An articulate, intelligent, extremely communicative individual, an outstanding conversationalist, Martinez made it easy to write stories about his teams. He was a nonpareil at filling up a reporter’s notebook and would do it in a rhythm of completely formed sentences that made note taking easy.

Back then Martinez was in his heyday as a coach. Not only was he a head football coach making a reputation for himself with the cutting-edge, sophisticated passing game he devised, but he was also the head coach for the CSM women’s basketball team in the winter and the head coach of the CSM softball team in the spring.

We’ve all heard of three-sport high school athletes. They are not as common as they once were, but they still exist. Three-sport coaches at the high school level are pretty much relics of a previous age. But three-sport coaches in college? Martinez is the only one I’m aware of.

The programs he built in basketball and softball were each dynasties in their own right. His teams tended to win 90 percent of their games, year after year, and made frequent trips to the state finals. Martinez retired from coaching at CSM as one of the most successful coaches in California community college history. He had more than 1,400 wins, all told.

A San Francisco native, Martinez was an All-City quarterback at since-closed Poly High. He went on to San Francisco State and started his coaching career at Jefferson High in Daly City as a football and baseball coach. Future Major League Gold Glove third baseman Ken Reitz played for Martinez at Jefferson and credited him as being the biggest influence on his development as a player.

Coaching year-round at the college level took its toll on Martinez, who began coaching at CSM in 1974. The football head coaching position was the first he relinquished, although he stayed with the program many more years as an offensive coordinator. Later on he stepped down as women’s basketball coach and last as CSM softball coach, retiring from the school in 2007.

After his retirement from coaching at CSM, he became more involved as a quarterback tutor, running the Tom Martinez Quarterback Camp and conducting individual sessions with a legion of young quarterbacks. He also was called upon to prepare college quarterbacks for the NFL combine, in recent years working with prospects such as JaMarcus Russell, Ricky Stanzi and Jeremiah Masoli.

Contact Glenn Reeves at 650-348-4345 or greeves@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him on twitter at twitter.com/GReeves23.