by Bil Luther

in 1989, new to the Monterey Pennisula, the first hand of friendship I was offered was from Jonathan Tower; a vital, handsome guy with a strange australio-british-american accent who blew into our living room, recruited our boys onto his soccer team, and me into a companionship with a kindred spirit, scholar and man's all around man. Two days after his 54th birthday in 1994, Jonathan was taken from us in a freak accident that transcended the dangers he had survived in war.

I'm not sure anyone asked me to write this eulogy, I think someone actually did, and I had the honor to give it at his funeral service, but regardless I would have read it to God alone if necessary to say what I had to say about Jonathan; especially for his children.

For the Family of Jonathan Tower

7/2/94

Someone made up a sign like this and put it in the median next to where Jonathan was struck down by a very careless motorist there on Lighthouse Avenue near Del Monte Blvd.



Later, after his memorial service, flowers were laid there in a man tall pile.

There is an old story among Eastern philosophers about five blind men and an elephant. The blind men are turned loose in a large room with a huge elephant for only five minutes. Then they are taken from the room and asked to develop a mutually acceptable description.

They could not agree. One argued that it was like a huge snake. The other argued that, no, it was like the trunk of a large tree. A third could only describe it as like a wall, the fourth as a snake and the fifth as a hard, sharply pointed curving spear. And so it went. They were all right, and yet they were so very wrong.

When it comes to knowing each other, we are all blind, and our knowledge of each other is incomplete. Children "know" the father. Wives "know" the husband. Friends "know" each other. We each share such small slices of our lives that we are never in possession of a real picture of who that was.

Who is that? Who was that? Eventually we can only know what got recorded and from that what gets remembered.

I am here, a blind man, to describe a man who was, like the elephant, too much to comprehend by any one person. A man much larger than most will remember since he was not one to put himself above others.

Jonathan Tower. He was part man and part mystic. Like T. E. Lawrence, better known as "Lawrence of Arabia", who Jonathan admired as one of the great mystics and liberators of our times, Jonathan felt inspired to be a liberator --- freeing enslaved and persecuted peoples from oppression. Lawrence championed the liberation of the Arab world from the Turks and Germans; and succeeded beyond any expectation.

Jonathan felt a similar calling in Vietnam where he was highly commended for bravery four times, but was broken by the realities of his comrades dying in his arms and an inglorious outcome for his country.

Jonathan gave great credence to Lawrence's bravery while never mentioning to me at least his own bravery under fire. Thankfully most of us will never know what that really means --- to be "under fire"; for others, like Jonathan, have done it for us.

And yet,
his greater courage, for me, was in an area less glamorized as courage in books and movies.

I mean in Love.
Love of his children,
their community and their country.

Love and sacrifice for his children
despite disappointments of every possible kind in his life.

And so
he made a full life out of a small space
a small town
and small jobs.

Full because he made each of them important
and gave himself to them.

And, while he complained
about worldly injustices and inequities
I never heard him complain even once
about his own lot or station in life.

And most importantly
he never even considered
running away
or quitting.
Whatever else you, his children may remember,
remember this...
He loved you very, very much
he put you far before himself in every way.

He compromised his own ego, interests
and beliefs to provide peace in your life.

And as a further important memory
I know this, while I did not always agree with him,
in fact we reveled in debate,
but he never once said anything to me
that to his knowledge, was not true.

I can't remember the name of the ancient Greek who wandered through town after town holding a lantern up to faces, looking for one honest man. It is too bad that he could not have shared in my own reward in knowing Jonathan Tower.
--------------------------------

he cared. he cared about his family for their sake not possessively he cared. he cared about what they wanted not what he wanted for them not what society wanted he cared. he cared for the truth and sought it and recognized its absence. he tried. he tried for his children for their sake not egocentrically he tried. he tried to give them truth not his truth not society's truth but real truth he tried. he worked hard to understand the reasons for things but, of course, there really are none. but, he tried.

-----------------------------
Jonathan;
friend --- I wish I'd been a better one.
father --- you were a better one than I.
coach --- forgiving and supportive of even the least player.

You were very good at caring about and loving your children, your family, their community, their country and your friends.