I miss John's presence here on earth. In my memory we are often taking a late night drive, talking, talking, talking. He was a good friend and so intelligent.
I could write forever about John Tower. We were VERY different, but the very best of friends right through the end of high school and until he was expelled from Rice University for drug use, after which I lost track of him. Whenever neither one of us had a date, we were almost always hanging together, as part of a little group including some other Southwest people from other classes and a few guys across State Line Road. As I said in my comments on Hal White, I believe, John was in my opinion the only person in the class who was in the same intellectual category as Hal White or Lucile Shanes, both of whom I knew very well. The difference was that John had no interest in working. Don't get me wrong, he would read voraciously, and if something interested him, he was all over it. His National Merit score backed that up. But so few things in our classes caught his interest. He was a rebel (not in the Southern sense) across the board, while I was clearly not. But we would talk and talk and talk, and cruise and cruise and cruise. He thought I was funny and strange in that I had no interest in drug experimentation, and normally that would destroy a friendship, but it never interfered. We did have drinking in common, however, and in high school he and I were near alcoholics in terms of volume and frequency--not just weekends. However, he and I were absolutely scrupulous about keeping to a designated driver routine with our group. We often got stopped by police while trolling some girl's house, but the police were so impressed with how rigously we stuck to our rules, including no open cans in the car while driving (everything in a cooler in the trunk), they always let us go. John was warm and funny, and always super smart. He did have a dark side, but I never saw it get completely out of control. You could see back then, unfortunately, that he was not going to take proper care of his health, and his early passing was not a surprise. I think of him even more now since he moved to KC from the Pittsburgh metro area, where I now live. He told me how great it was, and he was right.
I had a lot of friends who enjoyed double dating, or going out in larger groups of couples. John was never part of that. He liked his dates to be just the two.
Joanie Langworthy, we very often talked about you. He thought the world of you, and that is an understatement. And it was not simply that he thought you were beautiful, which I saw from a lot of guys back then. He felt like he knew your soul, and that it was as beautiful as could be.
The last time I spoke with John, which was probably at least 15 years ago, he was passionately committed to the radical environmental movement and deeply saddened by his brother's death in a motorcycle accident. I don't know the circumstances of John's death, but can only guess that life had become too much for him. RIP dear friend.
Joan Langworthy (Tomek)
I miss John's presence here on earth. In my memory we are often taking a late night drive, talking, talking, talking. He was a good friend and so intelligent.
Charles Schliebs
I could write forever about John Tower. We were VERY different, but the very best of friends right through the end of high school and until he was expelled from Rice University for drug use, after which I lost track of him. Whenever neither one of us had a date, we were almost always hanging together, as part of a little group including some other Southwest people from other classes and a few guys across State Line Road. As I said in my comments on Hal White, I believe, John was in my opinion the only person in the class who was in the same intellectual category as Hal White or Lucile Shanes, both of whom I knew very well. The difference was that John had no interest in working. Don't get me wrong, he would read voraciously, and if something interested him, he was all over it. His National Merit score backed that up. But so few things in our classes caught his interest. He was a rebel (not in the Southern sense) across the board, while I was clearly not. But we would talk and talk and talk, and cruise and cruise and cruise. He thought I was funny and strange in that I had no interest in drug experimentation, and normally that would destroy a friendship, but it never interfered. We did have drinking in common, however, and in high school he and I were near alcoholics in terms of volume and frequency--not just weekends. However, he and I were absolutely scrupulous about keeping to a designated driver routine with our group. We often got stopped by police while trolling some girl's house, but the police were so impressed with how rigously we stuck to our rules, including no open cans in the car while driving (everything in a cooler in the trunk), they always let us go. John was warm and funny, and always super smart. He did have a dark side, but I never saw it get completely out of control. You could see back then, unfortunately, that he was not going to take proper care of his health, and his early passing was not a surprise. I think of him even more now since he moved to KC from the Pittsburgh metro area, where I now live. He told me how great it was, and he was right.
I had a lot of friends who enjoyed double dating, or going out in larger groups of couples. John was never part of that. He liked his dates to be just the two.
Joanie Langworthy, we very often talked about you. He thought the world of you, and that is an understatement. And it was not simply that he thought you were beautiful, which I saw from a lot of guys back then. He felt like he knew your soul, and that it was as beautiful as could be.
Joan Langworthy (Tomek)
The last time I spoke with John, which was probably at least 15 years ago, he was passionately committed to the radical environmental movement and deeply saddened by his brother's death in a motorcycle accident. I don't know the circumstances of John's death, but can only guess that life had become too much for him. RIP dear friend.