“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.