Word: jonathans
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...metallic gold light of New York's Park Avenue Synagogue, the students approach Jonathan Levin's burnished casket, cluster for a moment, then take their seats. Over 250 come, black and Latino students from the William H. Taft High School in the South Bronx, where Jonathan taught English. The school has a history of assaults and violence; in 1994, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani sent a dozen policemen to patrol the surrounding streets...
...interest at the formally dark-clad mourners enacting the sad familiar rituals of funerals--the brief embraces and the exchanges of helpless looks. A few of the students tremble and sob. One, verging on hysterics, has to be led away. The first of the eulogists, a college buddy of Jonathan's, praises him as "one who knew how to love and teach kids...
These are the kids he loved and knew how to teach, and it is they--among the many hundreds of distinguished and powerful people who have come to honor the son of Time Warner's CEO, Gerald Levin--who speak for his worth. Jonathan, 31, was murdered last week in his home. For his family the grief is personal, unbearable. For his students the loss is nearly as great. That one of the two accused killers turns out to be a former student provides an especially mindless end for a man whose work concerned reason and learning. He was tortured...
...Jonathan came from money and prominence, both of which he abjured. That is why his death was noticed, but not why it was notable. Like thousands of others who bring will and intelligence to difficult schools in America's cities, he gave young people his life...
This is the sort of person friends say he was: loose, tender, open, funny. His one-bedroom apartment was a hostel where anyone could go to crash--on the couch, in the tub. The dog he picked out at an animal shelter was selected "because Jonathan thought he couldn't survive the aggressiveness of the other dogs." There was no ostentation in him, as there is none in his father. Someone recalls that Jerry told his son, "I'd like to talk to you about finances." Jonathan replied, "I'd love to Dad, but I'm a little strapped today...