John Kleshinski

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When I was with John Kleshinski, I always felt younger.

When Connie and I were in Boston for the 2004 Democratic convention, when the Red Sox were on the road, we had a chance to go on the field at Fenway.  Of course we invited John to join us.  John was waiting at the gate -- had been there for maybe a half hour -- with his old baseball glove, wearing the cap of our beloved Cleveland Indians.  He couldn't wait to go out on the field and touch -- just touch -- the Green Monster.

How could you not feel younger around John?  John traveled around Ohio with Connie and me in the last two weeks of our Senate race. Every morning he would show up at our house and say, "Man, this is like a party."

He never apologized for his enthusiasm. Here was a guy who -- at the age of 55 -- was still taking piano lessons and who had had his first piano recital in his 50s.

But that wasn't enough. If piano lessons -- if opening HIS soul to music -- could mean so much to HIM, why not help others have the same opportunities?  He would make it his mission to help hundreds of children make the same discovery, enjoy the same thrill.  In a few years, he had become the Chairman of the Community Music Center.  The head of the Center told Connie that John always had a vision, always had ideas about how to give those same opportunities to even more children.

If sitting on the shore at the Cape and looking at the ocean at sundown gave him a terrific appreciation of nature, why not help others have the same opportunities? Why not devote much of his time and money to the Lighthouse School, so children on the cape could learn that same appreciation of nature?

He didn't want to just help people, he wanted to empower them.

He told Connie and me recently that one night, a maid knocked at the door of his hotel room and asked if he wanted the bed turned down. "No thank you, I don't need you to do that," he said, handing her a $20 tip.  Incredulous, she said, "but I need to do something for you then."  "Pray for me," John answered. "What's your name?" she asked. John. "Then I will pray for you, John." She walked away, feeling empowered and knowing she had met someone kind and someone remarkable.

Pure and simple, John Kleshinski was the most generous man I ever met -- generous in spirit, generous with his time, generous in his enthusiasm, and generous to those who needed help.

My daughter Elizabeth recounts a story about John at their place on Cape Cod many years ago. Not wanting, in her words, "to disturb anyone or embarrass myself, I had plugged in the headphones, making what I played (on his piano) audible only to me." John insisted that she take the headphones off.  What I remember she said, was not "just his insistence, but the fact that there was genuine excitement in his voice. He really seemed to want to hear me play-just a small thing to him probably, but it felt huge and very special to me. I played a Bach Prelude in G for him, and he asked me what it was about Bach that I liked. He talked to me about the Music Center he loved and about the piano lessons that Emily had given him."

Although he was elected to the Mansfield Charter Commission and was elected to and served on Mansfield City Council, he much preferred changing the world behind the scenes.

He always thought that the wealth that God had given him -- wealth which he earned through his hard work and smart mind for business -- that wealth was meant to go to others: his dearly beloved music center, scholarships for disadvantaged students, generous tips for maids at hotels and vendors at the Jake, even some to a political candidate or two. . . usually, if a recall, a Democrat.

Everything to John was worth learning about. And everyone to John was worth knowing.  Wealth and status meant so little to John -- for himself and for people whom he met.  Father Borgia, Connie and I asked him to read the Beatitudes at our wedding.  For John preferred to walk among the meek and the peacemakers, among those who mourn and those who thirst for righteousness.  He cared far more about being a warrior for social justice than to walk among the rich and powerful.

He was a walking bundle of love.  Oh how he loved Emily.  And how he loved his parents.  And how he loved Cathy and Steve and Frank.  And how he loved his nieces and nephews and talked about them incessantly.

And everyone -- and I mean everyone -- loved John -- whether you knew him for 30 minutes or 30 years. There was something about John. My two brothers and I always thought that our mom and dad liked John more than they liked us. Our daughter Caitlin seemed to want to hang out with John more than she wanted to see us. And even our pets seemed to take to John more than to me.

He put everyone around him at ease.  He always thought of others first.  He always made people feel better about themselves.

A woman in my office, who was lucky enough to get to know John, wrote to me, "I hope John will help me get to heaven, because I know he's already there."

And John was always learning. When Emily bought him piano lessons one year for Valentine's Day, he practiced and practiced, and then he played in recitals -- always nervous before he played, he said, but always thrilled to get the opportunity. And out of that was born not just a love of music, but a love of the Music Center which touched so many young people and improved their lives.

He always served as a quiet role model -- challenging people by example to do better.  No one tipped more generously -- and more empoweringly -- than did John.  No one so unobtrusively helped family members and friends, new acquaintances and strangers, whenever he could.  And no one could have been -- for 30 glorious years -- a better friend. 

And he always -- in his inimitable way of telling you, with an anecdote or a parable -- he always told you what you needed to hear -- sometimes firmly, sometimes gently, and often with a lesson wrapped in a joke. The last email that John sent me, at 10:50 the night before he died, in response to a note I had sent him about our winning percentage in the Senate race, he retorted, "Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back. Wearing an arm cast at a US Senate swearing in would be most awkward and unappealing."

Some politicians have bodyguards.  On Election night, John decided that he should be my bodyguard.  You know,  6'6" 320 pound John Kleshinski.  But boy, he looked tough.  It was so John, always wanting to help.

For four decades, since he was a young teenager, he lived with diabetes. It was important to him that he showed his independence. John knew the risks, yet he chose to live that way. And Emily loved him so much -- and he loved her so much -- that he let him have that independence.  John, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 13, took such good care of himself, and he always knew Emily was only a few seconds away.  They talked several times a day -- every day. "She loves me too much," he often joked, even if he was the one dialing the phone. "I guess I'll have to keep her."

I've aged a lot these last few days -- I think we all have. And John Kleshinski isn't around anymore to make us feel younger.

The Greek poet Aeschylus wrote, "Even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."
I promise all of you -- if you tell each other stories about John as you did at the funeral home last night, as we all tell about John, and we laugh and think and reflect -- we will again feel younger.

Lucky, lucky us. . . Getting to share part of our lives with John Kleshinski.

12/28/2006 / Permalink / (all tags)