My friend

Simon was my friend of many years and I will miss him dearly. Although we lived in the same neighborhood while we were growing up, and although I had seen him at various times in grocery stores etc., I only actually met Simon several years later when we were both college age. We met in, of all places, a pool hall. Simon had become enamored of the game during his first year of college at University of Notre Dame. When he came home after that first year, Simon bought a full size tournament caliber pool table and put it in the garage of his parents' house. He practiced pool like a man possessed (Simon never did anything half-way), and within one year he had gone from novice to one of the very best pool players in San Antonio. This is no hyperbole---he was that good.

I remember fondly nights spent in that garage, shooting pool and listening to Loggins and Messina on the radio. Some of these sessions would last a full day or more. I recall one night when we turned out all the lights and lit but one small candle for light. We placed the candle about ten feet from the table, and by its faint light we attempted to pocket an extremely difficult shot on the (black) eight ball. In that very darkened room, I think we imagined that eight ball more than we actually saw it. This was vintage Simon --- always testing his limits.

Simon and I remained close friends all during my college days. After a brief 2 year stint in the Army, I reconnected with Simon in 1971. By this time he had begun to be involved in his spiritual journey. The fires that had powered his pool playing prowess had been redirected toward his studies of Buddhism. I remember him speaking to me of Gurdjieff (not sure of the spelling) whom he had read about in Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous. We had some talks about spiritual matters and I remember attending a meditation session with him. But this was still very early in his journey. We still had some pool to play (though not as much as before). And we also had some traveling to do. In the Summer of 1971, Simon and I took a trip to visit a friend of ours in San Francisco. Upon leaving San Francisco, we drove to Washington D.C. to visit my old Army roommate.

A few memories of that trip remain vivid to me to this very day. Somewhere in the Dakotas or Wyoming, Simon suddenly pulled the car over to the side of the road. I asked Simon what was wrong. He pointed back a few hundred yards to where a young calf had poked its head through the barbed wire fence to feed on the grass on the other side. The calf had become entangled in the wire, unable to extricate itself from it. Simon calmly walked back to it and spent several minutes working the barbed wire until he had freed the calf from its misery. This simple act of kindness was at the core of Simon's being.

At an earlier point in our journey, Simon's car had broken down. The transmission was shot. It took us hours to get a tow into the nearest town, Yarrington, Nevada. The man who gave us a tow was a local farmer or rancher. He was a very nice man and as we talked, he told us about the area and how there had been a drought in that already driest of places. We asked how he could put up with such conditions. I remember Simon nodding sagely at his reply that "it's just part of life." This acceptance of all things with equanimity was another hallmark of this great friend of mine.

When we finally got to Yarrington, we realized that we were going to be stuck there for a few days while the car was being repaired. Faced with this delay in our plans, I remember Simon saying "I wish we could just poke a hole in time and then we would come out the other side exactly where we wanted to be." I have thought about this statement many times in the last few days.

Simon and I eventually made it to Washington D.C., and spent several months there visiting with my old army roommate. It will surprise no one to learn that the two of them became very close friends. That roommate of mine, Mike Meehan of St. Louis, Mo., was also very saddened by the news of Simon's death. Though time and distance and circumstance have conspired to keep the three of us apart for the majority of our adult lives, we all remained close friends who were always in each others hearts.

I have one other poignant memory to share. My girlfriend at the time and I spent one New Year's Eve with Simon and Lynn. When it came time to announce if we had a New Years resolution, most of us had rather predictable and mundane resolutions. Mine was doubtless to quit smoking. Another resolved to lose weight, etc. To this day I clearly remember Simon's resolution --- "To jump as high as I can as often as I can." Wow.

In the last three decades I had seen Simon only a few times. On those occasions when he returned to his home town of San Antonio, he would always look me up, and we would spend at least one evening catching up on what the other was doing, reminiscing about old times and, yes, enjoying our favorite beverages while playing a little pool. I remember those times with great fondness.

I have written this recollection of some of my time with Simon so that those of you who knew him from a different vantage point could see another side of him. However, it is clear that it is actually the same side. Simon's goodness and compassion showed through in everything he ever did. He was quite simply the finest human being I have ever known I am honored to have known him. He was my friend.

Dennis McMahon