Brendan Hedges never felt at ease among his classmates at Oak Park-River Forest High School.
He was a quiet student with only a passing interest in girls and sports. And Hedges chafed at the cliques and peer pressures that dominate high-school life.
Instead, Hedges, 18, of Oak Park, devoted himself to music, a passion he had acquired in his sophomore year after his father had given him a guitar.
By the time he had graduated from high school, Hedges had mastered the guitar, piano, drums and bass guitar and was so accomplished he had attracted the attention of a record producer in Atlanta.
Last fall he enrolled at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he studied music and reveled in the school's diversity. In his free time, Hedges sat practicing at the piano his parents gave him as a birthday present or playing bass guitar at subway stops in the Loop with his band, Carter Lee and the Hired Guns.
"He was in his element . . . he was having a wonderful life," his father, Michael Hedges, said.
Brendan Hedges died Tuesday Jan 17th, 1995, after being shot Sunday evening.
