Letter from Joseph Pinion

Jon Kleier was my teammate.
At least, that’s how most people who knew us both growing up over the 13 years we spent together at Horace Mann would categorize or relationship. Ostensibly they would be correct. For seven years, Jon and I shared sidelines together, shed blood on the gridiron together, and sweat bullets on the hardwood together. But this characterization would fail to encapsulate who Jon truly was. It would fail to describe just exactly what Jon meant to me. That’s because Jon Kleier was more than a teammate. He was also my brother. He was also my friend.

Jon and I shared a bond that grew from years of mounting mutual respect, understanding, and admiration. Contrary to popular belief, football was not the embodiment of our relationship. Rather, football was the catalyst that allowed a Jewish kid from the city and a black kid from Westchester to understand concretely what they both had known intuitively from the age of 6 and refused to acknowledge: We were scarily similar! I call Jon my brother because like a brother, our similarities in many ways were a source of friction. Jon had a burning desire to be the best….to impose his will on his opponents in all aspects of life. The problem was I had that same desire, and two young boys journeying together through adolescence while attempting to be the same thing or prove the same point is often a recipe for disaster. We had moments of frication, probably years worth if you add them all up. I look back on them with now with great fondness and a tinge of Sadness. Fondness that I could find a kindred spirit in a person the world may have viewed as completely different from me. Sadness because now, my brother is gone far too soon and I wish I had back those wasted moments.

As a child my father always told me to be my own man. Be the “lead dog” he would say, a reference to the Iditarod dog sled races I enjoyed watching (don’t judge me). The lead dog is the guide. It is the sheppard for the other dogs and even the sled pusher. Its relentlessness spirit forces every other dog in tether to push forward and endure. Years before PETA and Mike Vick my father asked me “Do you know what they do to the lead Dog when he’s no longer good enough to BE the lead dog?” Not knowing any better I responded “Move it to the back?” Of course this was not the answer. “No” he exclaimed. “When the lead dog can’t be the lead dog anymore, they shoot it….shoot it dead….because there’s no going back….because the lead dog refuses to accept any other position….because it would rather die than back down.”

While I don’t know about the efficacy of this practice (or even that it really existed) it is clearer now what exactly my father meant. In fact, I believe it is analogous to the early pitfalls of my relationship with Jon. For 10 years, we were just two kids trying to be the lead dog. For 10 years, we were just two athletes vying for supremacy, not because we disliked each other but because of the unwavering belief we each had in our own God-given ability. But something happened along the way: we learned to love and respect each other’s talents. We learned to TRUST in one another to paint a broader canvas and deliver a more polished result.

Jon Kleier taught me how to trust. With him I learned how to be truly dedicated to a cause greater than myself. From him I learned how to pursue a cause with reckless abandon, not because of what you feel YOU are capable of but because of the confidence you have in the dedication and ability of the man beside you.

As you take the field today with the number of our fallen teammate emblazoned on your helmet, I urge you to play the game as Jon Kleier would have played it. Play with unbridled passion. Play without fear. Take the tools you have been blessed with, the plays you have learned, the values that have been instilled in you and unleash them ALL together in a chilling display of euphoric vitriol and elegance. Perhaps more importantly, play with the knowledge of the life lesson that Jon helped me learn: the lesson of the Lead dog. Because in football, the lead dog is not just one man but 11 men trusting in each other. The Lead dog is not one man willing to die for greed or pride but 11 men willing to lay it on the line for their brother secure in the knowledge that he would do the same for you. Be the lead dog….Be the Lion. Win homecoming!!!

Let’s get it!!!!!

Joseph Pinion III
Horace Mann class of 2001
Co-Captain 2000