He had funny hair. His mom said he said the same about me when I hugged her at his funeral. It was 1977 or 1978 when we first really began hanging out, Rose Royce was the heavy rotation favorite or maybe the Bee Gees with their Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, certainly the ever popular Sir Nose Devoid of Funk was making the rounds. He was the resident music and dance expert and he was on a mission to teach me to dance. We (known to each other as nip, wetback, and potato farmer) and he (kunta was the current favorite) would roam to his one-bedroom apartment after school (his mom raised him alone, having moved them to our neighborhood in a quest to escape the daily shootings of the west side) and shuffle through the steps in anticipation of the next party, the next get together, the next chance to look cool and make our moves with the ladies. When all else failed (I was not the most rhythmic) the secret of course became waiting for the slow dance (even white kids could handle the slow dance). "Reasons" by Earth Wind and Fire was 9 minutes long and by far the best slow dancing, move making, song around. During the spring he played the matchmaker as we wandered through the school yard, our female associates and we a safe 3 or 4 paces apart during the negotiations over mickey and his interest in a certain girl (and are you interested in him?). Of course as schoolyard romances go, it only lasted a short time. The summer was filled with nights of "reasons," "wishing on a star," and "more than a woman" and lazy days of walking the alleys, and biking along the waterfront. Our gang was inseparable. Near the end of the summer, while I was away at scout camp, I lost my first love to an older man (he was 14 and apparently a don juan who had swept her off her feet with his sexy accent and smooth basketball moves). That was also the summer Majdi (another kid in our class) was shot in the head for walking down the wrong alley and flashing the wrong gang sign; Jerrill's mom was undoubtably having second thoughts about their flight from the west side to the north. Oddly that was how life seemed to go, wonders of the world one minute and tragedy the next.
High school came and Jerrill (now called Bucky after another famous Dent) became a beloved athletic star, brainiac, and counselor to one and all. We learned how to drive together, we held our friend's head when he retched his guts out over a lost girl and too much tequila. When one of our other friends (the aforementioned nip named Bri) and I spotted him at the end of our high school hallway during room change (a year after our school entered the desgregation era by bussing in all the kids from the west side) we almost started our very own race riot. Bri had greeted Buck by shouting "Hey! Kunta!" innocently enough, or so we thought... apparently other people took race seriously. Having grown up as a smartass group of token irish (potato farmer/whitebread), black (kunta), mexican (wetback), japanese (nip), vietnamese (ho-chi min city), spanish (spic) kids, it was lost on us (still is).
Bucky and I went our own ways for college (he to the University of Chicago, me to the University of Illinois). We both married our college sweethearts and he decided to become not only a financial futures broker for Stanley Morgan but also a lay minister for his church. He had three children and a beautiful wife. He hosted monthly "how to be married" classes at his home (teaching my wife and I the odd and wondrous differences between men and women and the power of washing people's feet, of leading by serving).
Twenty years (though it seems like only a few short moments ago) after showing me the hustle and the truth about people with funny hair, as Jerrill related bouts with his now constant companion (he called it "Tumy" but we all knew it to be a rare terminal cancer at the base of his spine), he paused for a moment... and smiled... the light in his eyes lit up the entire room.
His funeral service a few weeks later was the most joyous and profound celebration of a life I have ever experienced. We were all sad beyond words at the senseless loss of our friend at such a young age, but more than that we were the luckiest people in the world to have shared his life.
That's the way of the world.
