The Loss of a Friend

I lost a good friend this week. John was that rare individual who was a type A personality combined with a sense of humor. He loved his work, he loved his family, and he loved the pure pursuit of knowledge. We worked together for quite a few years and hoped to work together for quite a few more before Cancer stepped into the picture. He was a perfectionist who implicitly understood perfection is impossible, yet poured his energy and focus into seeking it anyway. John understood his own flaws and accepted the flaws in others. He didn't judge people on the value of their achievements but rather the level of their effort. No one who tried to understand a problem ever got anything but complete support from John and no one who tried to cover up a problem ever got anything but his disdain and amusement. The first thing you have to do before you can learn anything is to admit you don't know it. John understood this implicitly and lived accordingly. The area of his interest was universally vast, the area of his confidence that he knew everything about a subject very small.

John and I didn't always see eye to eye on everything. We had our disagreements, stubborn people often do, and we both share that particular trait. I am immeasurably richer for having known John in a lot of different ways. I suspect that most people who knew John very well share that same wealth. If our value as people is defined by how we affect other people John was a priceless personality.


John worked his way up from the engine room of a Navy ship as an enlisted man to running rocket engine design test sites. Anyone who has ever took that route through life, that slow, hard journey from the bottom to the top, never forgets the lessons that come with it and John held those lessons close and dear. He went back to school many times, both in formal education and in his life experience. He worked his way through a doctorate in Physics, a sideline interest that he worked at continuously for most of his adult life. He used to say he wasn't the smartest guy in the class but he would make up for it by tenacity. He took that same attitude to any task he started on and every problem he struggled with. He just grabbed on and wouldn't turn loose. He took that same attitude to his personal relationships as well, never flinching from the hard work of learning by doing, trial and error. He wasn't afraid of the trial and he always learned from his error.

As I watched Cancer ravage his body and wreck his health he took the same approach with that trial as he had with so many others. He hid his pain and his suffering to protect the feelings of those he cared about. He never complained or bemoaned the luck that took such a vibrant well rounded man and slowly pulled him down with Cancer. He told me the first time I learned he had Cancer that he would beat it. If it could be beat he would beat it. He wasn't bragging when he said that, he was just explaining his approach, the same approach that took him through all the phases of his life, the same approach that never failed him.

John wasn't afraid of dying, he was concerned about what would happen to those he left behind. He hated the loss of those he loved more than he feared the loss of himself. The last time I saw John he had a few words to say about the quality of life. He wasn't concerned with his own quality of life as much as he was about the quality of life for his loved ones. Besides, he had a fight to win and the only people who were still offering to help him fight were in Arizona so that's where he was going. It was just one more case of him grabbing hold and not turning loose.

John's body is lifeless now but his spirit lives on. It's in that cackling laugh that all of us who knew him remember so well. It's in that attitude we take when we take that extra amount of effort to get that last bit of noise or uncertainty out of a signal at work. It's on test sites from here to the Mojave desert where people dig in and find solutions to problems instead of covering them up. It's in every cell of memory in every person who ever shared a joke with him or laughed at their own mistakes and then buckled down to fix it. It's in the stories of shared problems that he and I puzzled over, laughed at, and worked our way through on countless lunches and dinners. Most of all it's in the memories of his family, who he always held more dear than himself.

Cancer didn't beat John. It took the life from his body but everyone who knew him knows John Wiley was not defined by his body. I'll carry him with me for the rest of my life and so will countless other people, many of whom his family will never meet. Most of all, the lessons and unqualified love that John shared with his family will live on in their lives in ways that we can't begin to estimate. John innately understood that results matter little when measured against effort. Effort and tenacity always win in the end. I know they have this time as well. The influence of John's efforts will continue to spread like the ripples on a living pond; affecting generations of people through the efforts of all of us who he influenced. No disease of the physical body can beat that.