PART II- THE SIXTIES CATCHES UP WITH ME –

RONNIE JONES: SELF-PROCLAIMED LEGEND

Introductory Note – This essay deals with two intertwining ideas: 1) What it means to be a legend in someone’s life, and 2) How the transforming Sixties caught-up with a couple of colleges kids.

The Sixties had barely begun, when I toddled off to Oneonta, a teacher’s college in upstate New York, where like so many people, I met several legends in my Coming-Of-Age-College Cluster. Click here for a refresher on Legends LEGENDS IN OUR LIVES - by Fred Singer - CRISIS LEGENDS IN OUR LIVES - by Fred Singer -

We had no inkling of what was to come. Everything looked the same, felt the same. Cardigan sweaters, crew cuts, khaki pants, classes, football, parties, poker, study carols in libraries, fraternities, homecoming and beer. Kind of heavenly for eighteen-year-olds, away from home for the first time. Up ahead was the sociological eruption known collectively as The Sixties, a tidal wave of change, washing over those cardigans and crew cuts, leaving a transforming world in its wake.

In 1962 I moved into an off-campus house with three other guys, also future legends, including Ronnie Jones, a local kid who had been the all-conference running back in high school. Although Ronnie was a great football player, at five eight he didn’t have the size to get a football scholarship; is only option was the local college: Oneonta State. Unfortunately, after Freshman year, Ronnie was given the boot for a one-year probationary suspension. His grades weren’t all that bad, but he had cut so many classes that the school thought it best to ask him to leave. He shrugged it off with his characteristic grinning, dimpled bravado. “They’ll take me back in a year; they just had to put me down for being such a smart-ass.”

Everything with Ronnie was tongue-in-dimpled cheek.

To make ends meet he worked seven days a week at Halversham’s Flower shop, where It’s Always Time For Flowers. Every morning as he left for work, he’d flex his muscles, grin and say, “Well, I’m off to do battle with petunias and snapdragons.” He wasn’t on good terms with his family; Halvershams was his only source of income.

Ronnie was a parody of himself. He called himself, “Everybody’s Hero,” because to some extent, he believed it. As the star running back in high school, he was showered with compliments. One night we went bar-hopping to the non-college, local taverns. Lumbering through the bars in his high school bomber jacket and self-satisfied grin, he was in his element. Everywhere we went it was “Hi Ronnie, where you been,” or “Hi Ronnie, sit yourself down and have a beer.” He was an institution in Oneonta. His folks may have been the only black family in the town, which seemed to be irrelevant. Everybody’s Hero belonged to everybody. Ronnie was a Negro in sea of whiteness. His friends, his teachers, his teammates and the girls he dated were white. He once told me, “When I talk on the phone, nobody knows I’m a Negro.” He was something of an Oreo: black on the outside, white on the inside. It wasn’t an affectation, it’s who he was. Considering the demographics of Oneonta, he couldn’t have been anyone else.

At school dances, he felt almost deified. Little kids from junior high used to sneak into the dances to worship the football players. “There’s one,” the kids would say, pointing to the dance floor where Ronnie moved in a controlled way, his self-satisfied, grin, permanently etched on his face. Ronnie seemed to enjoy living life as a self-caricature. He amused himself, perhaps more than anyone else, with his satirical braggadocio.

In February I moved into Ronnie Jones’ apartment. We were something of a little United Nations, one black, one Italian and two Jews. The greater world beyond our college town bubble was vaguely perceived background chatter. George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama announced his uncompromising resistance to the civil rights movement. “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

Southern sheriff Bull Connor terrorized protesting blacks with hoses, dogs and mass arrests. President Kennedy declared, “The Civil rights movement owes Bull Connor as much as it does Abraham Lincoln.” Black Muslim leader, Malcolm X, warned, “The lesson of Birmingham is that the Negroes have lost their fear of the white man’s reprisals and will react with violence if provoked.”

All of this stirred a momentary fire in Ronnie Jones. At one of our Friday night parties, Ronnie muttered, “that goddamned Bull Conner. Why can’t he leave people alone?” Then he took a swig of Rheingold, flipped over the Kingston Trio album, made a sarcastic comment, and never said another word about it.

In the freshman class that year was a very attractive Negro girl. Warren, Bob and I urged him to check her out.

“Why do you assume I would be interested in her?” Ronnie said, a bit piqued. “Because we’re both Negroes?”

“No,” I answered, “because she’s great looking.”

“Then why don’t you go after her?”

“Why don’t you?”

Ronnie laughed. “Come on now, Fred. Would you go out with a Jewish girl just because she was Jewish? You know you wouldn’t.”

I knew I was losing the argument. I wanted to tell him that she was the only one in the entire city, and she looked like a winner. There were more Jewish girls around than the falling leaves of autumn, but there was only one pretty, intelligent black girl in the entire city of Oneonta. Warren and I schemed about somehow getting them together, but because Ronnie was closed to the idea, we shrugged it off.

On a lovely spring day in the middle of May, Ronnie returned from Halversham’s in a dismal mood. Steve noticed it immediately. “Were the snapdragons biting today?”

Ronnie tossed a copy of Time Magazine on the couch and slumped into a living room chair. “Ernie Davis died.”

“Who’s Ernie Davis?” I asked, thinking he was a guy at school.

Ronnie’s mouth was tight. No self-satisfied grins. “He was only the greatest Negro football player to come out of college since Jimmy Brown. The only Negro to ever win the Heisman trophy.” Ronnie stared at the floor.

“What was it?” Steve asked. “A car crash?”

Ronnie removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Leukemia. Leukemia. He was twenty-three fucking years old. It’s hard to believe.”

Six weeks later, back in the Bronx I received the dreaded news. The previous semester I had dropped intermediate calculus and astronomy. I still harbored some hope that a C in physics, a 4-credit course, plus three Bs in other courses would carry me through. The D in physics destroyed my GPA. The college “requested” that I withdraw from the student body.

It was over.

I wrote to Ronnie, telling him my spot in the pad was free. A few days later, he called long distance.

“Fred, you have to come back up here and talk to Professor Richards.”

“What are you talking about, I got a…..”

“Listen, I’m running out of coins. I called and told him I was you. I asked him about my grade in physics, and here’s what he told me. You got a seventy-five on the final exam. That doesn’t sound like a D to me, Fred. You really must talk to him.”

Ronnie was right. My physics grades weren’t all that bad. The seventy-five on the final should not only have put me over the C level in physics, but would have kept me in school.

Two days later, I was back in Oneonta under a scorching summer sun, so different from the school year with its heavy, silent snows muffling every home and street. The city felt different and even smelled different. The burning leaves of autumn and the cleansing snows of winter had been replaced by the odor of steaming asphalt and trembling heat wave illusions.

I walked the long, winding trail to the upper campus for probably the last time. I knew it was a long shot, but worth a try. I arrived early for our eleven o’clock appointment. The science building was understandably deserted on this Saturday afternoon. Just entering the building gave me a bad feeling. I walked toward the physics lab at the end of the hall. Professor Richard’s office looked dark. He wasn’t there. How could he not be here?! We have an appointment. Maybe he just forgot. Maybe he’s just late. But as I approached the physics lab I knew I was kidding myself. The only sound was the soft whirring of the air conditioner. Taped to the little window on the lab’s door was an eight by ten sheet of paper.

F.S.

I CHECKED YOUR RECORDS. SORRY, BUT THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO FOR YOU. R.R.

I stood there for a moment in the silent hall, staring at the sixteen words that effectively ended my college career and the trajectory of my life. I carefully pulled off the tape and removed the paper from the window, as if it was an important document that could not be damaged. I looked again at the paper, as if somehow, magically, the words would change.

The next day I found Ronnie on Maple Street painting a house. He was splattered with paint and perspiration. “Going already, Fred?”

The sun pounded both of us. I squinted from the glare. “Yea, I might as well catch the two o’clock bus.”

He displayed his paint-soaked hand and shrugged. “I’d shake hands with you but…”

“Ronnie, I want to thank you for checking on my grades….”

“No sweat, Fred. And don’t screw-up in the next school.”

I laughed. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.”

“So we’re getting racial, are we, boy?” (Ronnie called everyone, “boy.”)

We both forced smiles followed by an uncomfortable silence.

Ronnie wiped his dripping brow with his forearm. “I expect you to be visiting us regularly. You’ll always have a bed in the pad. We’ll be having lots of parties again this year. Especially with me back on campus.”

I promised I would, but knew I’d never be back. It wouldn’t be the same. I wouldn’t belong anymore. It felt like the end of a book. There were no more chapters. You can’t go home again. Pick your cliché. I had to let it go.

“I’d better head out” I said.

“Take it easy, Fred.”

I lifted my bag and headed to the bus station.

“Fred,” Ronnie called, halfway up the ladder.

I turned, shielded my eyes and looked up at him.

He hesitated for a moment, then another moment. “Play it cool….just…play it cool.”

“That’s the only way to play it,” I responded, not quite sure what to say.

I suspect he was trying to say that we were good friends and he’s sorry it’s over. I had a sense there were hidden levels in Ronnie that had not yet revealed themselves. I sometimes wondered who the real Ronnie Jones was, or even if there was a real Ronnie. Is it possible that the self-satisfied Negro (the only viable word at that time) boy with the horn-rimmed glasses really had no depth at all? Or was there a mountain of depth waiting to emerge?

2013

I look out onto the frozen, sunny Colorado landscape.

Three months ago, I found Ronnie. The internet provided all sorts of information about Everybody’s Hero. I think I understand what happened. I might just be wildly speculating, but knowing Ronnie as I did all those many years ago, and reading the online accounts, there is a certain consistency to his subsequent life. Consistent but tragic.

I hesitate to call. I should just leave it alone. Ronnie is not going to like what I write about him, and he won’t be shy about telling me. Contacting Ronnie is going to be trouble, but I can’t resist calling him up almost a half century later. I’ll never forget that last New Year’s Eve. Does he even remember? So many reasons to let sleeping dogs lie. I Google Ronnie again; maybe something positive will blink in from cyberspace.

December 31, 1967 – East 81^st street, New York City

Ronnie showed up at my apartment on December 30^th with a car and a black girlfriend. We had seen each other sporadically over the intervening years. I had written the following in my journal after Ronnie’s last visit in October.

Ronnie finally graduated and is working for the government in Albany. He is now very Black Power conscious… He thinks he is different from other Negroes because he graduated from college. His conceit is no longer funny like it was at school.

On the last evening of 1967, I sat at my desk grading American history essays. “Shit,” Ronnie muttered when he hung up the phone. “It looks like I’ve been shot down for New Year’s Eve.”

“What happened?”

“Lenore’s mother doesn’t want her coming into the city tonight because of the snow and all the drunks driving around. They live up in Westchester.”

I look out the window. “Yea, it’s coming down hard.” I shiver. The heat in fifth floor walk-up apartment was never quite adequate. I turn to Ronnie. “That’s too bad.” I should have stopped there, but wandered instead into dangerous territory. “I was surprised to see you with a black girl. Is she the first you’ve gone out with?”

“No, I’ve gone out with a few,” he answers matter-of-factly. He pauses. His voice has a slightly harder edge to it. “Why? Does that surprise you?” We had had a similar discussion back at Oneonta when Ronnie refused to date the pretty black freshman girl.

I should let it go, but I don’t. “In Oneonta, you only dated white girls.”

Ronnie shrugs. “It’s all the same to me. I go out with whoever is available.” He also could leave it there, but adds, “What about you? I bet you wouldn’t go out with a Black girl.”

“I really don’t know.”

“Don’t beat around the bush, Fred. Would you?”

He was pushing, so I pushed back. “To tell you the truth, no.”

“Why, Fred,” Ronnie says, with his familiar grin. “You’re just as much a racist as everyone else.”

“Oh, come on, Ronnie, it has nothing to do with racism. I go out with --“

“Then why don’t you go out with Black girls?”

“Because they, well, I mean…”

“It’s because you’re prejudice.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Prejudice has nothing to do with it.”

Ronnie keeps pushing. “You haven’t given me a single reason. Just give me one legitimate reason why you don’t date Black girls. You can do that, can’t you Fred?”

“Okay, you want to know why I don’t date black girls? I’ll tell you why: because I’m not attracted to them. They don’t turn me on. They don’t do a thing for me.”

Ronnie grinned at me triumphantly. “And you say you’re not prejudice. Stop kidding yourself.”

“You’re the one who’s kidding himself, Ronnie. Why don’t you go out with fat, homely girls? Why, you must be prejudiced against them. What other possible reason could there be?”

“That’s exactly right. I’m prejudiced against homely girls just like you’re prejudice against Black girls.”

“For crying out loud, Ronnie, you’re missing the point. It’s not prejudice; it’s just a matter of taste. Go out with whomever you want. And I’ll go out with –“

Thankfully, the phone rings. It’s Franny, my girlfriend in Brooklyn.

Her cold is worse. She thinks we should spend New Year’s Eve at her house.

“What about Ronnie?” I ask.

“Sure, he can come over if he wants to.”

“Do you want to go to Franny’s house?”

“Will her parents be home?”

That pushed all of Franny’s nice-Jewish-girl-buttons. “No, no, no,” she said to me over the phone. “I don’t want him here. I hate that kind of attitude.”

Ronnie read my expression. “That’s all right, Fred. I don’t mind staying here alone. The great Ronnie Jones shall endure.”

As the snow continued to fall, and the meager steam did what it could to warm the small apartment, I graded history papers at my desk while Ronnie lounged on my bed.

I read a sentence aloud from one of the essays. I thought it would ease the tension and create a positive spirit. It didn’t.

“Listen to this, Ronnie. ‘Although slavery was a bad thing, it was probably more humane than most other forms of slavery in the past.’ “

Ronnie shook his head. “That’s nothing more than a typical racist fallacy.”

“It was written by a Black kid.”

“The fact that he’s ignorant doesn’t change anything.”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” I said uncertainly. “If I was going to be a slave, I’d like to be in the house serving food than out in the fields.”

“My God, Fred. You’re a history teacher and you believe that bullshit, too. American slavery was among the most brutal in history….”

“Wait a minute, Ronnie. The Romans used to consider their slaves as animals and could do anything to them, including killing them. And Africans themselves sold other Africans into slavery.”

“Good God, Fred, do you think it was any better in America? The slave owners used to shove a stick of dynamite up a slave’s ass and light it, just to celebrate the Fourth of July. How ironic is that? Celebrating freedom by blowing up slaves.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing. Besides, it’s hard to believe slave owners would blow up their own property.”

Ronnie was no longer lounging on the bed. He was standing next to my desk. “You may not have heard of it, but it was a common occurrence. American slavery was brutal.”

I remembered Gone With the Wind. “There were plenty of house slaves who were treated well. Most slaves weren’t beaten or blown up.”

Ronnie read my mind. He fired back. “Oh, no. You’re not thinking about that racist movie, are you? Gone With The Fucking Wind has done more to distort Negro slavery than just about anything in recent history. Fred, holy shit. That was all fiction; the happy house servants frolicking about in the kitchen while the field hands sang spirituals, picked cotton and ate watermelons. Slavery was brutal. How can you teach that stuff to your kids?”

I began to tell him that nobody teaches that slavery was a good thing; the South’s defense of slavery went from it being necessary evil to being a positive good. He cut me off. “Fred, do you know who Crispus Atticus was?”

Before I could respond, he answered his own question. “He was the first man killed in the American Revolution. And he was Black. But that’s never in the history books.”

“Ronnie, I hate to tell this to you, but you don’t exactly have it right. He was one of the colonists at the Boston Massacre who threw ice balls at the British soldiers and shouted ‘kill the Redcoats.’ In the confusion he was shot. He wasn’t a soldier; he wasn’t even a patriot. He was a rabble rouser.”

Ronnie was not smiling. “Just like the Blacks today, right Fred? Just trouble makers. Just rabble rousers.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“That’s what you meant.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. The fact is that you have to be totally fucking stupid to throw ice balls at heavily armed soldiers in a tense situation and threaten to kill them. He wasn’t a hero. He was just stupid.”

“So, Blacks are just stupid rabble rousers. Isn’t that right, Fred?” He paused for a moment. “You’re just like everyone else.”

Ronnie was standing next to my desk; his fists were clenched. I shivered from the cold and the frozen moment. The temperature outside was dropping, the dark night of winter had almost enveloped the city, and us along with it. The meager heat from the radiator tried its best.

My anger level had been rising up. I was still seated at the desk, facing Ronnie. Being naturally opinionated, I couldn’t stop arguing. “For crying out loud, Ronnie, I’m not talking about all Blacks. We are talking about one guy in 1770. Besides, the other colonists who were killed were white. And they were also throwing snowballs and screaming at the British soldiers. It wasn’t just the Black guy. They were all rabble rousers.”

Ronnie was still standing next to my desk with clenched fists. His jaw was tight. He was almost snarling with anger. His usual, grinning irreverence was gone. I think we were both taken aback by the intensity of this frozen moment. The chilly room was enveloped in a wintery silence. I had nothing else to say. And neither did he.

I wished it was 1963 and we were having another party at the pad. We are drinking beer and the Kingston Trio is singing Scotch and Soda on the scratchy hi fi. It’s getting late and we have to get the girls back to the dorms by one. But it wasn’t 1963; it was just hours away from 1968. In those five years the world had changed. Everything was different. Everything.

When I arrived home at my Manhattan apartment the next day, January 1, 1968, Ronnie Jones was gone. I never saw him again,

I wrote the following in my journal.

Ronnie becomes more and more racist every day. His hatred of whites is now a big part of his life… I’ve heard both sides and can’t decide. I hate the rioting but the truth is that Negroes have been suppressed for so long…I really don’t know...

Under the sarcastic exterior something burns…a vague hatred, a wistful longing…something. What is it that drives Ronnie Jones? He is like a comic book character, a caricature hiding something potentially explosive.

Considering subsequent events, this observation was amazingly prescient.

RONNIE JONES SCREAMING FOR GLORY - 2013

Man will lay down his life for his country, his society, his family. He will choose to throw himself on a grenade to save his comrades; he is capable of the highest generosity and self-sacrifice. But he has to feel and believe that what he is doing is truly heroic, timeless and supremely meaningful. Ernest Becker – The Denial of Death – 1974

When I found Ronnie almost a half century later, I was amazed then shocked, then worried. I’ve been putting off calling Ronnie for weeks. I’ve already learned plenty about him on line, and it is not all good. Of course, I’ll won’t tell him what I know; as far as he is concerned, I know nothing about what seems to be a terrible deterioration. I suspect that the anger I read about online was not a response to a single incident, but a visceral response coming from deep within him. I’m treading shaky ground by trying to analyze Ronnie from online accounts. I know I should let sleeping dogs lie; I know that calling him will be nothing but trouble.

I had no idea that when I last saw Ronnie on New Year’s Eve, he wasn’t just “black power conscious,” but was already fully committed to the civil rights movement as a member of The Black Brotherhood. (A fictitious name)

He never told me about any of that.

The Black Brotherhood, read an article about a black militant group in the late1960s, rose out of the frustrations in the city’s poor and predominantly Black neighborhoods…they were all male, all Black and all angry…They helped make the word Negro passé, replacing it with Black.

Ronnie was its Minister of Defense. “It gave me a place to enlist with honor,” he said in a 1990 interview. “The Brotherhood’s mouths were not mealy…They were not apologetically seeking their rights.”

An air of militancy cloaked the Black Brotherhood, the article continued, one that they cultivated.

Jones recalled that his job was “defense…We had professional fighters…people who knew about jail…that if you didn’t fight for your ass, you would literally have to give up your ass…

Jones said that the group had to let people know that its members weren’t afraid, “otherwise you’re opening yourself up to people who don’t have any courage…When you say you’re not going to fight, everything that’s normally under a rock comes out after you.”

The Black Brotherhood faded after a few years, as many of the members went on to more conventional lives. But from what I can tell, most of what Ronnie did in his subsequent life was associated with his black identity.

After his stint with the Black Brotherhood, he joined the staff of a Black, Democratic New York State Congressman and remained there for fifteen years as his chief of staff.

Since around the turn of the twenty-first century, Ronnie has lived in Wyandanch, New York a black community in what is otherwise an essentially the white suburb of Babylon. In 2002 the potential explosion I had sensed, ignited, not against whites, but against other Blacks.

In 2001, at the age of fifty-eight, Ronnie was elected to the school board of Wyandanch, a Black township of twelve thousand people on Long Island. Ten months later the Board of Education, comprised completely of African - Americans, found him guilty of “official misconduct” and forcibly removed him from office.

Excerpts from the official report

• that “…during a taped interview for public television…Jones falsely and recklessly stated that the roof of a school building was in danger of falling down.

• According to the charges, Ronnie disrupted a board meeting by calling the [Black] chairman “an idiot.” At another meeting, in response to a discussion about attending the board’s retreat, Ronnie reportedly said, "… we ain’t going nowhere with these niggers."

  The Ronnie Jones I knew used perfectly correct English, never said ain’t and never used the N word.

• “At a 2002 meeting…acting in his capacity as a trustee…Jones admitted that he had called the taxpayer names worse than "‘uneducated Negro’ and that…he solicited a parent to bring false charges of sexual misconduct against a district employee.

• “Jones threatened to use physical force and used obscene language against a taxpayer, yelling ‘…you are an uneducated Negro…’”

• “where a trustee engages in a pattern of inappropriate, antagonistic and offensive conduct that interferes with the board’s ability to function, removal is warranted.”

• “…a pattern of behavior that included personal attacks, racial slurs and antagonistic behavior toward his fellow board members and a taxpayer.”

• “…demonstrate both a lack of remorse or appreciation of the inappropriateness of his conduct and an inability or unwillingness to conduct himself with civility and decency. “

• “referring to Board members as ‘idiots’, ‘thugs,’ and ‘gangsters’ and stating that they ‘lack mental capacity [and] ... calling the hearing chair a ‘fool.’"

WHAT HAPPENED TO RONNIE JONES?

What happened to Ronnie? What caused this visceral anger?

I’ve been avoiding calling him now for weeks. If he really is unhappy with his place in life, if he had such high expectations and ended up not meeting those expectations, he might not want to resurrect the past. I’ve been telling myself for a month to let sleeping dogs lie. I fantasized a nostalgic trip down memory lane. But now I’m not so sure. I really only know who Ronnie was, not who he is.

I know I shouldn’t call. I feel guilty, as if I’m surreptitiously spying on his life. It’s all out there online. Our little debate about slavery on New Year’s Eve almost forty years ago will be mild in comparison to the explosion that’s coming. I can’t resist. He’s one of my legends; online articles are not enough. I take a deep breath; I have to call.

Stalling a little more, I check the internet one more time; maybe I’ll find something positive about Ronnie. I do find something. Stunning news. Ronnie Jones is dead.

THE WYANDANCH COMMUNITY IS SADDENED

TO ANNOUNCE THE DEATH OF WYANDANCH

COMMUNITY ADVOCATOR

RONALD JONES

His funeral was exactly one week ago. Had I called earlier, had I not put it off, we might have spoken.

Ronnie is gone. It’s hard to believe.

He was a “community Advocator.” What exactly is that? Barak Obama was a “Community Organizer” who went on to become President of the United States. Ronnie specifically chose a black community where he hoped to make a difference. Perhaps appointing himself Community Advocator was an attempt gain some feeling of accomplishment.

Friday, August 3, 2013 –

It’s been two months since Ronnie’s death. I call his widow, Bethany Jones.

She says she is happy to speak with me. “I can tell from the sound of your voice that you were good friends with Ronnie.”

She tells me about Ronnie’s years as an aid to the long-time majority leader in the New York State Assembly.

“He was something of a Jack of all trades. He handled the Congressman’s staff, arranged for his travel. Ronnie wrote very well. In later years. he taught at a college, and helped write proposals for a museum in Queens. He was a community-based organizer.”

She tells me that Ronnie had a stroke in 2007, at the age of 64. “He got around all right,” she says, “but he had a series of heart attacks and died this year.”

“A lot of people turned out for the funeral. We also had a memorial in Brooklyn where we lived for ten years. We had a big spread of pictures: The Life and Times of Ronnie Jones.”

I wanted to see his life displayed in pictures; why didn’t I call sooner. Friendships last a lifetime; death is forever. Ronnie was very smart, confident, and strong. Maybe his persona got in the way. Maybe the sixties with its black power, led him astray. Maybe his ego got in the way. Maybe his inability to be Everybody’s Hero to the African-American community, was crushing.

A SCREAMING FOR GLORY

Ernest Becker wrote that the desire for heroism can be “a blind drivenness that burns people up…a screaming for glory as uncritical and reflexive as the howling dog.”

When Ronnie styled himself Everybody’s Hero back in Oneonta, it was many things: a self-parody, conceit and amusement. But most importantly, it’s who he wanted to be. When he talked about having courage, about fighting for your ass, about being willing to fight as a member of the Black Brotherhood, he was using “heroic” terms.

Edward O. Wilson wrote the following in his Pulitzer-Prize winning, On Human Nature.

Lives of the most towering heroism are paid out in the expectation of great reward, not the least of which is a belief in personal immortality. When poets speak of happy acquiescence in death, they do not mean death at all, but apotheosis, or nirvana; they revert to what Yeats called the artifice of eternity.

Yeats, Wilson and Becker are all saying that heroism as a means to gaining immortality is a scam. The artifice of eternity is a psychological sleight of hand. We convince ourselves that our heroism will gain us cosmic significance. But it is nothing more than a smoke screen that blinds us to the truth of our insignificance. We might be momentary heroes, but eternity negates our pretenses at importance.

Ronnie was complicated. I can only speculate, but I would suggest that the rage he felt at the end, was not just a rage against the dying of the light, but a rage against a world that did not give him his due; it was a rage against a world which basically told him that he would never be the hero he expected to be. He was retaliating against a world that was telling him that his life is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing; that he was really not a hero; that he was nothing more than a poor player on life’s stage; that his dreams of glory were a fantasy.

As I write these words, I feel guilty; I’m picking apart someone’s life – and death – with something resembling clinical, academic objectivity. Life is full of failures and disappointments. Our coming-of-age years help us come to grips with who we are, as opposed to who we think we are or hope to be.

I dealt with these realizations in college; Ronnie came up against them much later on.

I’m sorry things didn’t work out for you, Ronnie. I wish you had been a bigger hero. Thanks for helping me out with Professor Richards back in 1963. You would be happy to know that Everybody’s Hero is a legend.

Rest in peace, Ronnie Jones, rest in peace.