Rev. Dr. Shirley Cox

I first met Councilmember John J. Kennedy when he was a student at McKinley Junior High School. I taught in a dreary old bungalow with my co-teacher, Chuck DeVore, who taught in the adjacent bungalow. Chuck thought it might cheer up our space if we added a large mural on the end of the building, and we had an all campus competition to design the mural.

John won that contest with a heartfelt design that portrayed goodwill. Students built John’s mural, a line of rainbow colored people who were holding hands. It was simple, straightforward, and elegant. Gang members, who had tagged up the school repeatedly, never defaced that wonderful and hopeful representation from the heart of John J. Kennedy.

I taught almost 30 more years in Pasadena. I saw John often in those years in various community places. I followed his life with great interest and always exchanged warm greetings.

He remained the caring person I first met when he was 13. I often told him the country was ready for a second President John Kennedy. His integrity and commitment to the disenfranchised was extraordinary.

When I heard that John died, a piece of hope within me was lost. He was the kind of man who had always lived the heart of the gospels – love and serve. Like thousands of others, I was cheering him on.

Heaven now has our hero and the time he journeyed with us was a lovely gift.

I hope he saves me a place at the Mexican food section of the banquet table.

Dr. Ula T. Taylor

I met John Kennedy at Cleveland Elementary School in Pasadena. It was our neighborhood school, which meant it was within walking distance of our homes. Everybody knew John because he had a big family and all of his siblings looked like a Kennedy! He was one grade ahead of me, and I recall his sandy brown hair and a wide smile on the playground. Fast forward many years later, we also both graduated from Blair High School in Pasadena. It was at Blair that I witnessed John play on the varsity basketball team and sit in our beloved Mrs. Gladys Roshko’s English class. Mrs. Roshko was a teacher who recognized our intelligence and assisted us in cultivating our critical thinking and writing skills. John fully embraced all that Mrs. Roshko had to offer, and I overheard her brag to another teacher that he had become a beautiful writer.

John was a scholar athlete who seemed to be able to skillfully balance sport and academics. Most of us would have been satisfied with this success, but given John’s eclectic personality, he added student government. It’s somewhat cliché to describe someone as a born leader, but I think it was fitting for John. In fact, I always introduced John to friends as my first Black president. He was smart, hard-working, well-dressed, and focused; however, I think it was his great sense of humor that drew people into his orbit. John knew how to make us laugh and amuse himself at the same time. There was power in John’s wit. His bellowing voice was filled with comic perception and knowledge gained at school, in his home, at church, on basketball courts, and in our communities. This is what I most appreciated about John. He understood and celebrated that we are all capable of bringing joyful insights to our social and political realities.

As I struggle to make sense of my friend John J. Kennedy’s death, I also believe that God’s purpose for us is to not only fulfill his divine plans for our life, for us to be fulfilled by those plans but to also have an impact on those people we have been blessed to know and love. I believe John is blessed in the next life as I was in this one by knowing and loving him.

I have stayed connected with his family through various ventures and for many years. My memories of John are clear, filled with both laughter and gratitude. Whenever we talked, it was nearly always about family, friends, the greatness of God and politics. I knew him as