John was an affable, easy-going, productive and legendary character while at Shaw. As early as his time at Kirk, he was known to run all the way down from his home on Hollister (near Mayfield and Taylor) to the Kirk football field where I witnessed him several times vigorously performing calisthenics.

All this, and much I don't know about, served to build John into an honor student who went on to be a captain of industry.

But while still at Shaw, he was the All-State linebacker for the '68 Executioners (see photo attached) when he roughed up the formidable likes of Harvey Horowitz of Heights and George Hasenohrl of Garfield. Hasenorhl went on to a stellar football career at Ohio State and the New York Giants.

But John's glowing athletics record doesn't stop there. John was 2-time State medalist in the 100 yard breastroke and a 2-time State medalist in the shotput. At a track meet at Heights, in the spring of 1969, John competed in the 100 yard dash just for fun, and dazzled the crowd with a time of 10.8.

John chose to live in Cleveland after a brief stint at Dartmouth and completing his degree work at Ohio U. I believe he may have transferred to OU to join a fraternity to which Rick Clark belonged (Rick was in the SHS Class of '70, a mighty cardinal quarterback famous for his frequent statue of liberty plays, which I assume were expected to lose yards, and for holding the OU record in the 200 yard freestyle with a time of 1:44, about the same clocking that he, John, Pete Havens and Tom Gest registered in a State medal-winning 200 yard medley relay performance in March 1969).

All this is from memory, so I welcome corrections and additions. I'm sure I speak for the entire class when I say we hope John can attend the next reunion and have one-on-one conversations with all his old teammates.

The "photo" attached is actually a downsized scanned image of the popular "Executioners" sticker found on many lockers, cars, windows and doors. We were invincible - and if only John could have knocked Harvey Horowitz out of that game, for which I climbed up the Heights High clock tower to set hands back the night prior to the game (which was, sadly, corrected by game time), we'd have won every game. We tied Heights, 6-6...but would have lost if John hadn't kept Harvey penned much of the time.

The "document of proof" is a downsized photo the Shaw swim team, taken in November 1966. For a full-size image of either image, please email a2jeeves@comcast.net.