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The is nothing I can write now, 30 years after the fact, that could even begin to measure the scope of our loss. So I am not even going to try.
I will, instead, let John Lennon have a say:
I didn’t hear about it until the next morning. On my way to the subway on E. 198th Street in the Bronx, I stopped in at the candy store on the corner to buy a pack of cigarettes. And there I saw the headlines on the tabloids.
In the job I had at the time, at a medical college on the upper eastside of Manhattan, I had occasion to be in contact with Dr. Stephen Lynn, the E.R. physician who tried, but was not able, to resuscitate John Lennon after he was shot and killed. This brought the whole thing closer to me than it might have been otherwise.
In addition to this connection was the circumstance that in the late summer or autumn of that year, as I was walking up Central Park West to meet my wife at the theater in the Park, I walked right by John and Yoko, who were standing in the street, hailing a cab. New York City is the biggest small town in the universe.
Rest in peace, John Lennon.
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