JOE ARMSTRONG
Senior vice-president and group publisher, Worth, Civilization, Equity

When John knew he was ready to leave the D.A.'s office, Jackie asked me to meet with him, to talk to him about what he might do next. Jackie admired the fact that he was so open to things, so curious, that he loved adventures. She identified with John -- he was full of life and good humor, a constant spark -- but she worried about him, too. She knew he had leadership potential, but he was so charmingly casual all the time. He needed to go out and do things on his own, but she was always working behind the scenes, totally vigilant, trying to subtly make things happen, come up with options and ideas.

KEN SUNSHINE

He campaigned for David Dinkins for one long day in 1993. And where else would we go but Zabar's? We purposely didn't announce it until that morning. We didn't let the cameras in until he got a chance to talk with people. But as soon as we got there, John was absolutely attacked by a crowd of mostly over-70-year-old women. Now, I represent Leonardo DiCaprio, and I've never seen anything like this. They were climbing over the lox counter to get to him. Dinkins got separated from him. John never traveled with security, and Dinkins was the only one with a phalanx of security. So it was just John and this army of screaming septuagenarians.

BILL EBENSTEIN
Executive director, Reaching Up

John thought the key to providing better health care and human services was to focus on the caregivers for people with disabilities, the people working for low wages. He formed Reaching Up, to give people scholarships and mentorships to cuny, about a decade ago. Now it has about 1,000 people who take classes and over 400 Kennedy fellows who get extra scholarship money and career mentoring, and each one of them has met John. He knew almost all of our Kennedy fellows by name; he'd known them for years. He talked to them about their work, their kids, their school, their life -- did they get their new house, had their kid graduated school.

ROGER BLACK
Design consultant

Around 1994, a friend of mine bumped into him at the gym. She asked him out to a Bruce Springsteen concert at the Meadowlands and he came. I rented this big limo to take us all out there, and we had these excellent seats in the tenth row. Literally every girl in the ten rows in front of us was completely ignoring Springsteen and had turned around to watch John. You know how Springsteen fans used to do that thing with holding up their index finger back then? John did that, too! I think everyone was careful not to offer him any drugs.

JOHN PERRY BARLOW

The first time he told me about Carolyn was a night at Tramps in early '94. John was still going with Daryl. And he said that there was a woman that he'd met who was having a heavy effect on him. He wasn't going to pursue it, because he was loyal to Daryl. But it was hard for him, because he couldn't get his mind off her. And I said, "Well, who is she?" And he said, "Well, she's not really anybody. She's some functionary of Calvin Klein's. She's an ordinary person." Which of course was not so, she was anything but an ordinary person, but as far as the rest of the world knew, she was. And he maintained a platonic relationship with her until after he and Daryl had broken up.

CHRIS CUOMO
Friend

One day, we were at Martha's Vineyard, and he decided that we would swim from the shore to someone's boat. We swam several hundred yards, which completely wrecked me, but he wasn't even winded. On the way out, he asked me who I was dating, and I started complaining how hard it was to find anyone special. It was right before John married Carolyn, and he told me not to worry. He said that he played the field for a long time and worried about never meeting anyone, and then one day he met Carolyn and from the first minute he knew that she'd be the one. He said it all comes down to keeping yourself open: that you meet all these people who don't work out for different reasons, and then one day, someone pops up and really grabs your heart, and suddenly what happens to them is as important as what happens to you.