Local Man Died On Flight Eleven

When Layla Cable finally coaxed the Japanese magnolia on the border of her property to grow about ten years ago, she discovered that she was terribly allergic to the flowers.

Each spring, she would consider getting rid of the tree as she braced herself for two weeks of watery eyes and constant sneezing—but her next-door-neighbor John C. Jenkins would implore her to keep the delicate, fragrant tree standing. It was simply too beautiful to knock down.

The question of what to do with the magnolia became a sort of running joke between the neighbors, who were drawn together over the years by the proximity of the quirky, multi-colored family houses lining their Cambridge neighborhood halfway between Harvard and Porter Square.

The neighbors were not close friends, Cable says, but she delivered Jenkins baked goods on the holidays, they cleaned snow off each other’s sidewalks each winter in an attempt to avoid the inevitable flooding, and they talked at the occasional neighborhood potluck or outside Jenkins’ neat gray house.

They’d chat about Allen and Dylan (Jenkins’ overweight housecats suffering from feline leukemia), possible home improvements or Cable’s three children.

“[Jenkins] was the kind of man you’d want in your life, or in your daughter’s life,” Cable says. “He was one of the kindest men on the street.”

“He would meet people, and be so nonjudgmental, so good at listening,” says longtime friend Mike Stone. “He was just one of those people, when you met him you’d want to meet him again.”

When Jenkins suddenly died on the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 last Tuesday, the 45-year-old lover of cats, fine cuisine, Puccini and old movie posters left his family, close friends, coworkers and comfortable neighborhood shocked and off-balance. Even as they continue with their day-to-day routine—walking the dog, playing with the children, grabbing sandwiches at Oxford Spa—Jenkins’ neighbors have spent the past nine days unsure, struggling to regain their footing after last week’s terrorist attacks touched them, quite literally, in their own backyard.

“I’ve had a lot of tragedies in my family,” says Cable, a Palestinian who has lived in the West Bank, Beirut, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. “But the thing that shook me hard is the fact that it was somebody kind, somebody next door. I thought that I come to Cambridge, I’m safe. And then I say, ‘Oh my God, in a little community like Cambridge, you can lose your neighbors.’”

BF: “A Real Success Story”

Jenkins had worked since May of last year in the John Hancock Tower as a corporate offices service manager for Charles River Associates (CRA), a consulting firm. Before joining CRA, he held management positions at ADD Inc. Heidlage & Reece, P.C., Commonvest Associates Trust, Landmark Foundation and Palmer & Dodge, LLP. Last Tuesday, Jenkins was on his way to L.A. to meet with the West Coast branch of CRA, a voyage he made two or three times this year as he helped the company expand its domestic and international offices.

“Even in the short time he was here, he made a lot of friends,” says Cynthia Butler, CRA’s vice president of human resources. “He was really loved.”

Butler pauses for a second before continuing. “We’re having a very hard time here.”

The consulting firm’s website links to a tribute to Jenkins that details his achievements.

“John graced CRA and this world with his presence, and those of us who knew him will never forget his spirit,” the website reads.

His friends say his personality lent itself to resolving disputes.

“He was a very gentle guy—very good at putting people together,” Stone says.

Frequently pausing as he talks, Stone describes Jenkins as “a real success story.” Jenkins put himself through high school and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst while living in Cape Cod and holding down two or three jobs, Stone says.

“Here was this kid who grew up in abject poverty, and he was just starting to come into his own,” Stone says. “He was just starting to really be free. It was grand.”

BF: A Void Left Behind

Part of Jenkins’ freedom, Stone says, was the ability to buy his own house in the Cambridge neighborhood he had grown to love, after renting a place for years on nearby Wendell Street.

Crescent Street is nestled in a corner off Oxford Street, just past Lesley College and Agassiz Elementary School., a ten-minute walk from the Square. In the afternoon, squealing children play outside. A black-and-white housecat with a silver collar wanders skittishly down the tree-lined sidewalk. Two houses sport large American flags. Jenkins lived at 22 Crescent Street, a well-kept gray house with a white staircase and simple red door that had been his home for nearly two decades.

By all accounts, it’s a gentle, friendly neighborhood, with a corner store, laundromat, kids, pets and occasional potlucks and block parties.

Wednesday morning, Mary Jo Clark runs a daycare center out of her 32 Crescent Street home. Plastic play structures and baby strollers litter the front yard and porch. At 8:15 a.m., two children have already been dropped off to spend their day with Clark. The little girl sits on Clark’s lap and giggles at Sadie, the golden retriever, while the little boy plays with trains under a table.

As she keeps an eye on the children, Clark remembers her disbelief last Tuesday when she learned that her neighbor had died in the terrorist hijacking of the American Airlines flight which crashed into the World Trade Center.

“Everybody feels like there’s a hole in my street now,” Clark says. “[Jenkins] was someone who, if you saw him, he’d always smile...this great boyish smile.”

Clark says she learned of Jenkins’ death from a neighbor last Tuesday. She walked immediately up the street to the Oxford Spa, the corner store where her 17-year-old daughter Katie Clark has worked after school for two years.

When she told Katie that Jenkins had died in the terrorist attacks, she says her daughter burst into tears.

“That was the most I’d ever seen her cry,” Clark says. “It just brought it home.”

Jenkins was a regular at the store.

“He would always come into the store and order a sandwich. Baby ham, brie, avocado on white bread,” Katie remembers. “We’d talk about his cats...he was always such a friendly guy. It’s just shocking.”

When the Clarks heard that Jenkins was one of the approximately 5,000 victims of the terrorist attacks, they put Sadie on the leash and walked to Star Market to buy flowers to place on Jenkins’ doorstep. In her own quiet sort of memorial, Katie went back to the Oxford Spa and made him a sandwich.

The next day, Katie says she saw Jenkins’ friends bring a truck down her street to clear his belongings out of his house.

It’s an image, she says, that will always stay with her.

“They were moving all the stuff out and I just couldn’t stay on the street. I had to go,” Katie remembers. She shakes her head and pulls nervously at her straight blonde hair as she speaks. “The whole thing’s just too sad.”

For about a week, members of the neighborhood continued to place flowers at the door and even held a silent vigil for their friend last Tuesday evening. A handful of Crescent Street residents took the train to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston to attend Jenkins’ memorial service on Monday, where a crowd of 400 spilled into the hall. Besides his neighbors, Jenkins leaves behind his mother, Florence Deatherage of Kentucky, and two brothers, James Jenkins of Ohio and Jeff Jenkins of Kentucky.

A group of children living on the street taped a sign reading, “John, we’ll never forget you,” on their neighbor’s front door.

Mary Jo Clark traveled into Boston again last night to attend a vigil for peace. Jenkins’ death has, she says, helped solidify her view of an appropriate governmental response.

“For me, I just don’t want anybody else’s neighbor to die. I don’t want us to go indiscriminately bomb,” she says, her voice growing stronger and more emphatic. “This sort of makes it personal.”

BF: Sudden Regrets

Katie says that she and her family are also struggling with a sense of regret that they did not know Jenkins better.

For years, Mary Jo Clark says, she eyed an old poster for My Favorite Wife with Cary Grant on Jenkins’ wall, visible through his front window. As a fellow old movie buff, she says she was intrigued.

She later learned at the memorial service that Jenkins, too, was a fan of movie and TV trivia and collected original movie posters.

“I always meant to ask him about it,” Clark says. “I wish I had.”

Layla Cable says she feels a similar nagging regret of a missed opportunity at friendship, particularly after hearing poignant anecdotes from Jenkins’ friends at the Monday night service.

She learned about his love of collecting things. His house was a veritable archive for old copies of The New York Times dating back 20 years.

“I think there was a side to him I never knew about. We just knew him as smiling John, the guy who’d always stop to chat or touch a cat or talk to a kid,” Cable says. “But I never had dinner at his house and he never had dinner here.”

She pauses for a second. “Sometimes you keep putting things off.”

Cable says she is hoping that, if nothing else, last week’s tragedy could make the families on this comfortable, tree-lined street less isolated. At the risk of sounding cliche, Cable says, she’s also reminded at how fragile life is.

“Maybe one thing that would come out of this is that people will start paying more attention to their neighbors,” Cable says. “You never know when they’re going to need you...or just not be there any more.”

—Staff writer Daniela J. Lamas can be reached at lamas@fas.harvard.edu.