Jon was a brilliant student, and I began just the opposite. For twelve years he tutored me, never once losing his patience with my truculence toward the ridiculous nature of most school subjects. He succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations, for I graduated in the top 5 percent of both high school and college. Jon, of course, graduated at the top of our class as well as being voted best athlete in both high school and college.

Jon was so good a quarterback that catching his well-thrown passes made me a college football star in spite of myself. Jon could have played professional football if it hadn't been for the Vietnam War. It seems that Jon's father had incurred the wrath of two members of the local draft board who revenged themselves by having Jon and me drafted two weeks after our college graduation.

In the army we stayed together all the way to the final patrol, where our platoon was blown to pieces and I found myself carrying Jon through what seemed like endless miles of jungle. Somehow we were found by medics and flown to a base hospital where Jon was parted from his right leg and I gave up the sight in my left eye.

While Jon was never bitter about the loss of his leg during that monumental madness called the Vietnam War, I was filled with rage. Jon said that he had learned a valuable lesson in that he could not bring himself to kill or even wound another person, even to save his own life. But I could have told him that without the Vietnam War.

Perhaps the single most difficult thing about Jon for me to understand was what I called his tender-heartedness. He couldn't bear to hurt anything. Yet while he would not intentionally step on a bug, or even uproot a plant, he didn't go around preaching his beliefs to others. He always said that each person can only learn when they are ready to learn, and that what is right for one person can be wrong for another.