Just a Couple of Kids

by Steve Bernstein, 2003
Compassionate Connections, Gilsum, NH

John and I had just returned from our trip. It was August, 1971. We had bicycled from the Bronx, through New England, to Montreal and back. We were sixteen.

John was the best friend to me. He was funny, non-judgmental and loved hanging out with me. I didn’t catch on until adulthood, but he really respected and looked up to me. Over the years, we went our separate ways. He became a cop, me a plumber. But, he never let me stray too far, albeit I wanted to. Unlike John, I moved on from thing to thing, person to person, place to place. He always kept tabs on me, never stayed out of contact too long. If not for him, I believe I would have drifted away from our friendship. He was always a far better friend than I was.

John and I hadn’t known each other all that long when we decided to go on a bike trip together. We had fallen into a friendship based mostly on sports and girls, but ended up looking for closeness, connection and maybe a different version of male-teen-Bronx-1971-teenage choices.

We came from far different places, some may say even different cultures. He had lived his entire life in the North Bronx, a predominantly white blue-collar neighborhood. He came from what looked to be a sane family. Loving parents, close twin brother. He was half Irish and half Italian. Not to say they didn’t have their version of family craziness. They did. It just wasn’t the insanity in which I lived. I came from the South Bronx. A community in transition, mostly non-white, crime and drug ridden, depressed and spiraling downward in front of my eyes. I came from a Jewish heritage but lived a confusing existence very atypical for my ethnicity. The 60’s was a hellish time with so many different types of people, ill prepared for the fast life of New York moving in and so many first and second generation immigrants of European decent moving out. People were hard pressed to figure out how to get along in that boiling pot.

After my dad had been stabbed, my mom took the lead and moved us north. Cleaner, safer, whiter - not sure if it was better. I was struggling and found myself more troubled than ever. Oddly enough I missed the action of the street, the Latino and African American gangs I grew up in. Wasn’t to be found in the North Bronx. That’s when John and I hooked up. I needed a friend.

I was a confused and rageful teen. My father’s alcoholism, my identity conflict as a tough street-gang kid pitted against the suppressed child prodigy that I really was, along with the hard reality of my spiritually impoverished family, conditioned me to view life from a survival perspective. This strategy, more often than not, was what got me through. Right up until today.


I had graduated from De Witt Clinton High School when I was sixteen. It was a boys school of 8,000 students from all over the city. I graduated 52nd out of 2,500 students.

I had started learning my trade at twelve. I always worked not only in my father’s construction business as his key “man,” but I also had after-school jobs. I was the most independent young adult I had ever met.

As an adult, John often remarked, “Steve, I never knew how you pulled through. Your life was so crazy. You never got a chance to be who you could be. You never had time to be just a kid”. I just needed a break. So much pressure: school, working, abuse, the streets and adolescence. No wonder I was planning on running away that summer. John didn’t know it, but I wasn’t coming home. The bike trip was my way out.

That March, John and I started training at the Bronx Botanical Gardens. It was the closest thing to New England that we could find. We loaded up our ten-speed Schwinns with our most cherished bar bells to simulate, saddlebags and packs. We rode the park several days a week until July 5th. That’s when we hit the road. North-bound, on Boston Post Road.

The trip was the best experience of our lives. Out every day, riding from hostel to hostel, seeing the sights, meeting girls, out in the sun, getting strong and fit, having fun - what kids are supposed to do.

After 4 weeks on the road, I was about to tell him to go on home without me. We were in Montreal when I made the mistake of calling home, hearing my distressed mom tell me I’d better get home, “Your father needs your help. Can’t make it without you.” I broke down and came home. I think I would have made it, if I hadn’t called.

When I got home, my dad was doing a remodeling job in a Brooklyn department store. He let John work with me for a few weeks to help out. We hung out the rest of the summer. Together, we worked everyday, went out with girls and played ball.

Vietnam was going full force. Our friends were coming home in body bags. What are they fighting for? We were two young guys looking around the world, trying to figure out who we were and where we fit in.

One afternoon, on the way home from work, we decided to check out the newly completed first tower of the World Trade Center. We parked and walked around. A couple of kids. He, a fun loving, normal seventeen year old. Me, a manchild, driving a van, doing man’s work in the world, but still a kid, I just didn’t know it.

We were awed by the structure: its magnitude, its stature, its symbolism. This building was amazing and bewildering. Why so big? What do we need it for? Does this building - this incredible piece of human ingenuity and all the ideals it represents - have something to do with everything? What did we know? What we did know is that we were in the presence of something entirely unknowable. Just a couple of kids.

It was the beginning of September. School wasn’t open yet. John was going back to high school and I was going on to the City College School of Engineering. College had been my father’s grandiose idea. Not mine. After a few months, I quit school and got married.

We stayed friends, but for the next several years, John and I kept missing each other. In 1979, he lived with me for a year in New Hampshire, to where I had finally escaped the Bronx. Married and divorced by twenty-four, I was running my own plumbing business.




John worked with me for a while, realized the trades were not him and pursued police work. He moved back to New York, taught high school and eventually became an Emergency Service cop in Harlem. We stayed in touch. Families got together. He called me more than I called him.

John was always counting down his stint so he could retire and go back to teaching. He had a year or two left when the planes hit. The week before, we had just had the most wonderful phone conversation. Close, deeper than friendship, a couple of forty-six year olds looking at life, our lives and supporting each other to the next phase. I was divorced for the second time and he was struggling with every cops’ sense of doom.

John’s last words to me were, “I didn’t a get scratch in almost twenty years. I’m not worried about that. I’ll keep rescuing bridge jumpers and hostages held by crack psychos. That’s not a problem. What we’re worried about down here is terrorists.” I didn’t know what to say. Terrorism was something you see on TV. Terrorism happens in Europe, Africa, the Middle East - not here. As usual, I ended the conversation with, “John, take care of yourself,” and hung up. I have to admit, he left me feeling scared and worried when he mentioned terrorism. He was always, sarcastic, cynical, upbeat and cocky about life. Not this time. That’s why it was the best talk we ever had. He let me in as I did him.

That was September 6th. My birthday. He always called me on his birthday in August to remind me to wish him a happy birthday. Then, the next week, he would call to wish me a happy birthday.

He was my best friend. A great man, a great human being. He was saving lives when the tower went down. He left a family and a couple of kids.

As young men, John and I had shared our life’s adventures together. As I grew older, these experiences shaped my career choices. For twenty-five years, I have worked with abused, neglected and at-risk teens. Currently, I am the founder and director of Compassionate Connections, a non-profit organization which connects teens with mentors, internships, apprenticeships and opportunities for healthier choices.


On September 11th, 2001, I was scheduled to do a college workshop. When I arrived on campus, I saw my staff and dozens of students huddled around the TV. Someone looked over at me and said, “You don’t know what happened, do you?” I said, “No, I was out hiking and haven’t turned on the news yet.” I took one glance at the TV and all I could say was, “John is in that building!” I knew he was in there saving people. The same building we visited thirty years ago. It was brand new then. We were just a couple of kids.