John Kleshinski, 55; found joy in sharing his riches
By Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff | December 15, 2006
A few weeks before John S. Kleshinski died, he heard a knock at the door of his hotel room in Ohio, where he was helping his best friend campaign for the US Senate.
In the hall stood a chambermaid, who asked if he wanted his bed turned down. He declined, but gave her $20 anyway -- a characteristic gesture from a man so grateful for his financial success that he tipped big and tipped everyone, even the ushers and hot dog vendors at baseball games.
Surprised at his generosity, she said, "I have to do something for you," according to his friend Sherrod Brown. And he said, "Just pray for me."
The woman asked for his name and said, "I'll pray for you, John," Brown recalled.
"John said she walked away feeling a little empowered. He really noticed people who are too invisible in society," said Brown.
Mr. Kleshinski, a philanthropist since retiring in his late 40s, died of a heart attack while sleeping in his Chatham home Nov. 29. He was 55 and was president of the board of the Community Music Center of Boston.
"John really believed that the wealth he had accumulated was not his to keep," said Brown, the US representative who was elected to the Senate last month. "It was given to him to pass on, so he did all the time."
"He loved to say he was just a poor boy from Ohio stumbling through life," said Mr. Kleshinski's wife, Emily Paul. "He felt very humbled by his good fortune."
Just as humbled by the positions he held, Mr. Kleshinski was a board president who made sure he knew the first names of the Community Music Center's teachers, one of whom was his own. A dozen years ago, his wife gave him five piano lessons at the center as a Valentine's Day gift. "He said he'd always wanted to learn to make music on his own," she said. "He grew up in a family that couldn't afford music lessons."
For 12 years he stayed with the same teacher. Even after acquiring the title of board president two years ago he shared the stage with other students, young and old, at recitals.
"I always said he was the only one there without a mommy," his wife said.
"He was always extremely nervous," said David Lapin, the center's executive director. "You could see his hands shaking before his fingers even hit the keys."
Mr. Kleshinski was more at ease once his turn had passed, cheering on his compatriots.
"He never envied anyone, even an 8- or 9-year-old who played better," Lapin said. "He was always their biggest fan."
Mr. Kleshinski, a native of Mansfield, Ohio, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when he was 13.
"When he first moved to Boston, he lived on Beacon Hill and we used to walk to Fenway," Brown said. "He told me about when he was growing up. He said if you're diagnosed at that age, you don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't stay out late -- you have to become more disciplined as a teenager."
Smitten by politics early, Mr. Kleshinski was student body president at John Carroll University in Cleveland. With a name that immediately identified his Polish heritage, he campaigned with the slogan, "A Pole you can lean on."
He received a master's degree in business administration from Xavier University and lived at first in his hometown, where he served on the City Council. In the mid-1980s, he moved to Boston and worked for Medco Containment Services, where he sold group health insurance to large firms. His success there and stock investments allowed him to retire young and concentrate on interests such as the music center and the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School in Orleans, where he was on the board of trustees.
Mr. Kleshinski and Paul met through mutual friends in 1988 and married a few years later. When he turned his attention to philanthropy, "he always told me he wanted to share what he had with others," she said. "He didn't think he deserved it any more than the next person."
An optimist by nature, Mr. Kleshinski "tried to find something every day to be joyful about," his wife said. "he just lived and died by sports, especially."
"He loved watching the Indians win at Fenway," Brown said, "although that didn't often happen."
During his eulogy at a funeral Mass in Mansfield last week, Brown mentioned that when he married, he asked his friend to take part in the ceremony and read from the Beatitudes.
"John preferred to walk among the meek and the peacemakers, among those who mourn and those who thirst for righteousness," Brown said at the Mass. "He cared far more about being a warrior for social justice than to walk among the rich and powerful."
In addition to his wife, Mr. Kleshinski leaves his parents, Sylvester and Magdalen of Mansfield, Ohio; two brothers, Francis X. of Jeannette, Pa., and Stephen J. of Los Gatos, Calif.; and a sister, Catherine Stout of Mansfield.
A memorial service will held at 10 a.m. tomorrow in Wimberly Theatre in the Calderwood Pavilion at Boston Center for the Arts.
12/28/2006 / Permalink / (all tags)
John Kleshinski
When I was with John Kleshinski, I always felt younger.
When Connie and I were in Boston for the 2004 Democratic convention, when the Red Sox were on the road, we had a chance to go on the field at Fenway. Of course we invited John to join us. John was waiting at the gate -- had been there for maybe a half hour -- with his old baseball glove, wearing the cap of our beloved Cleveland Indians. He couldn't wait to go out on the field and touch -- just touch -- the Green Monster.
How could you not feel younger around John? John traveled around Ohio with Connie and me in the last two weeks of our Senate race. Every morning he would show up at our house and say, "Man, this is like a party."
He never apologized for his enthusiasm. Here was a guy who -- at the age of 55 -- was still taking piano lessons and who had had his first piano recital in his 50s.
But that wasn't enough. If piano lessons -- if opening HIS soul to music -- could mean so much to HIM, why not help others have the same opportunities? He would make it his mission to help hundreds of children make the same discovery, enjoy the same thrill. In a few years, he had become the Chairman of the Community Music Center. The head of the Center told Connie that John always had a vision, always had ideas about how to give those same opportunities to even more children.
If sitting on the shore at the Cape and looking at the ocean at sundown gave him a terrific appreciation of nature, why not help others have the same opportunities? Why not devote much of his time and money to the Lighthouse School, so children on the cape could learn that same appreciation of nature?
He didn't want to just help people, he wanted to empower them.
He told Connie and me recently that one night, a maid knocked at the door of his hotel room and asked if he wanted the bed turned down. "No thank you, I don't need you to do that," he said, handing her a $20 tip. Incredulous, she said, "but I need to do something for you then." "Pray for me," John answered. "What's your name?" she asked. John. "Then I will pray for you, John." She walked away, feeling empowered and knowing she had met someone kind and someone remarkable.
Pure and simple, John Kleshinski was the most generous man I ever met -- generous in spirit, generous with his time, generous in his enthusiasm, and generous to those who needed help.
My daughter Elizabeth recounts a story about John at their place on Cape Cod many years ago. Not wanting, in her words, "to disturb anyone or embarrass myself, I had plugged in the headphones, making what I played (on his piano) audible only to me." John insisted that she take the headphones off. What I remember she said, was not "just his insistence, but the fact that there was genuine excitement in his voice. He really seemed to want to hear me play-just a small thing to him probably, but it felt huge and very special to me. I played a Bach Prelude in G for him, and he asked me what it was about Bach that I liked. He talked to me about the Music Center he loved and about the piano lessons that Emily had given him."
Although he was elected to the Mansfield Charter Commission and was elected to and served on Mansfield City Council, he much preferred changing the world behind the scenes.
He always thought that the wealth that God had given him -- wealth which he earned through his hard work and smart mind for business -- that wealth was meant to go to others: his dearly beloved music center, scholarships for disadvantaged students, generous tips for maids at hotels and vendors at the Jake, even some to a political candidate or two. . . usually, if a recall, a Democrat.
Everything to John was worth learning about. And everyone to John was worth knowing. Wealth and status meant so little to John -- for himself and for people whom he met. Father Borgia, Connie and I asked him to read the Beatitudes at our wedding. For John preferred to walk among the meek and the peacemakers, among those who mourn and those who thirst for righteousness. He cared far more about being a warrior for social justice than to walk among the rich and powerful.
He was a walking bundle of love. Oh how he loved Emily. And how he loved his parents. And how he loved Cathy and Steve and Frank. And how he loved his nieces and nephews and talked about them incessantly.
And everyone -- and I mean everyone -- loved John -- whether you knew him for 30 minutes or 30 years. There was something about John. My two brothers and I always thought that our mom and dad liked John more than they liked us. Our daughter Caitlin seemed to want to hang out with John more than she wanted to see us. And even our pets seemed to take to John more than to me.
He put everyone around him at ease. He always thought of others first. He always made people feel better about themselves.
A woman in my office, who was lucky enough to get to know John, wrote to me, "I hope John will help me get to heaven, because I know he's already there."
And John was always learning. When Emily bought him piano lessons one year for Valentine's Day, he practiced and practiced, and then he played in recitals -- always nervous before he played, he said, but always thrilled to get the opportunity. And out of that was born not just a love of music, but a love of the Music Center which touched so many young people and improved their lives.
He always served as a quiet role model -- challenging people by example to do better. No one tipped more generously -- and more empoweringly -- than did John. No one so unobtrusively helped family members and friends, new acquaintances and strangers, whenever he could. And no one could have been -- for 30 glorious years -- a better friend.
And he always -- in his inimitable way of telling you, with an anecdote or a parable -- he always told you what you needed to hear -- sometimes firmly, sometimes gently, and often with a lesson wrapped in a joke. The last email that John sent me, at 10:50 the night before he died, in response to a note I had sent him about our winning percentage in the Senate race, he retorted, "Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back. Wearing an arm cast at a US Senate swearing in would be most awkward and unappealing."
Some politicians have bodyguards. On Election night, John decided that he should be my bodyguard. You know, 6'6" 320 pound John Kleshinski. But boy, he looked tough. It was so John, always wanting to help.
For four decades, since he was a young teenager, he lived with diabetes. It was important to him that he showed his independence. John knew the risks, yet he chose to live that way. And Emily loved him so much -- and he loved her so much -- that he let him have that independence. John, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 13, took such good care of himself, and he always knew Emily was only a few seconds away. They talked several times a day -- every day. "She loves me too much," he often joked, even if he was the one dialing the phone. "I guess I'll have to keep her."
I've aged a lot these last few days -- I think we all have. And John Kleshinski isn't around anymore to make us feel younger.
The Greek poet Aeschylus wrote, "Even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."
I promise all of you -- if you tell each other stories about John as you did at the funeral home last night, as we all tell about John, and we laugh and think and reflect -- we will again feel younger.
Lucky, lucky us. . . Getting to share part of our lives with John Kleshinski.
12/28/2006 / Permalink / (all tags)
 |
VOLUNTEER Help us win on Election Day |
 |
HOUSE
PARTIES Host or attend a house party |
 |
SPREAD
THE WORD Tell your friends about Sherrod |
 |
TAKE
BACK OHIO Sign the petition, join the team |
 |
SPEAK OUT Tell Sherrod what you think |
 |
ONLINE TOOLS Tools for bloggers and webmasters |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Photos | Ads | All Video | Audio |
