I was 19 at the time, and that would have made Michael something like 11 years old. He was still a member of "The Jackson Five" then, before he would become a solo act. His song at the time went like this, "You and I must make a pact; we must bring salvation back; where there is love, I'll be there." Yes, "I'll be There." I thought it a beautiful song and it resonated with me. Me, a white boy not long out of public housing in Southeastern Pennsylvania, where I was a minority in a largely African-American neighborhood, and where I  was in love with the Rhythm and Blues of the day. And in that context, Michael and his brothers seemed like bubble-gummers. Compare the young Michael's voice and songs to Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman" and Otis Redding's "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay." Not even "in the Midnight Hour" with the wicked Wilson Pickett and a few beers was I going to easily acknowledge Michael and his brothers as accomplices in my soul-searching life. Please, I was a small arms expert marksman with an M-16, and here I was in the U.S. Air Force, freshly arrived in a theater of war, looking to make my bonafides as a man so I might return to my neighborhood with the credibility sought by most of my blue-collar friends: a veteran of war, someone deserving of the space and conversations I would occupy with my fellow veteran returnees. I would never return to the neighborhood, but plugging into the zeitgeist of the Vietnam War -- even if we would all suffer an exclusionary status with the world at large -- I found a lifeforce that took me to another place in life, to education and to the pursuit of story-telling -- for the sake of news and for the sake of moving people emotionally and politically, and sometimes legally, for the better good. I find those skills useful these days in helping people sort out their lives and live better lives.

 

But back to then, and to Michael, and to "I'll be There." I remember listening to the song as I cut my teeth on hard liquor and slot machines and a sense of adventure as I began my year in Southeast Asia. So much would transpire, and I would change greatly in that year. Death and grief. And an introduction to the vicissitudes of life, even in one year. I would never forget a sense of innocence and pure adventure at the beginning, and that would be captured in Michael Jackson singing, "I'll be There." As my life perspective changed that year -- from having a sense of nobility and adventure to viewing the world in hard, fragile but courageous reality -- I would think back to the beginning of my experience in Southeast Asia and to Michael singing "I'll be There." Today, on his death, that is the song I remember most by him, and it still comforts me. God, how life changes. And, yet, how so much of what we were in our innocence remains to the end. I remember Michael in his innocence, and I remember being better prepared to face evil by listening to a song in which his innocence resonated with mine. Thanks for seeing me through, Michael.