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graduated from the eighth grade at St. Agatha’s, but he was becoming harder and harder for his parents to handle. Andy decided to ship him off to what was then an all-boys Catholic prep school in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, Mount St. Charles Academy. Jimmy stayed behind in Milton and enrolled in the public junior high school.
    As a freshman, Johnny became the starting fullback on the Mount St. Charles football team. His teammates called him “the Milkman.”
    â€œThat was because he always delivered,” his teammate Ed Bradley would explain a half century later.
    It was funny how Ed Bradley and I became friends. He was black, I was white, he was on scholarship, I was from a middle-class family paying full tuition. I had a father, he didn’t. I know he thought about it a lot later, and so did I: How did he end up what he became, starting with nothing, while I became … well, what I became.
    He was a quiet guy, I was a quiet guy. One day after practice, we were walking back to the locker room, and he said to me, “You know, Johnny, you’re white and I’m black, but one thing we got in common is the same teeth.” See, he had a space between his two upper front middle teeth, just like me. We laughed, and that’s when our friendship started to develop. I called him Big Ed—that’s all I ever knew him as. When he came looking for me at the prison all those years later, at first I had no idea who “Ed Bradley” was. But I remembered Big Ed, just like he remembered “the Milkman.”
    I’ve run into a few guys from the old team since I got out. One guy, John McLaughlin, we called him “Clem,” I saw him and he reminded me how there was another kid from Boston, a little guy named Johnny August. Johnny’s dead now, but Clem told me how one time he was picking on Johnny August, and I grabbed Clem and told him to lay off Johnny August.
    I’d forgotten all about it, but he was bullying the kid, and I had to stop it. That’s just the way I am, always have been. That’s what I was always taught. All my childhood, I was around people who instilled in me the same values. Be loyal to your family and your friends. My father wanted the best for me; he didn’t care whether I became a doctor, a lawyer, or if I made a lot of money. He would say, “Always be a man.” Take care of the people around you. There’s an old Sicilian expression that Andy used— Sangu du mio sangu. It means “Blood of my blood.”
    And that’s what I always tried to do—protect the “blood of my blood,” not just my families and my brother, but also my friends. I always tried to make my father proud and live up to his expectations.
    It’s the same lesson I got from Father Riley, and later on from my coaches at Milton High. I learned from Big Ed, too. He taught me that blacks were no different than anybody else. If you’re on my team, I’m with you all the way. Later on, that’s how I felt about the gang. It was just another team, and we were all on the same team. Although of course I found out later that we weren’t—on the same team, that is.
    Another thing I always believed, even back then. If a friend asks you to do something, you try your best to do it for them, as long as it’s the right thing to do and they deserve help. I always lived by that code. That’s a lot of the explanation for what happened later. I was doing what people asked me to do, to help them out. You can say to me, you killed a lot of people, and you’re right, I did. But I always had my reasons. I didn’t kill for the hell of it, like the other guys. I was always helping somebody out, or I thought I was. When somebody gets hit, it always helps somebody else.
    You know, I’m still on good terms with all the different people from the various periods of my life, even my kids’ mothers. I don’t have any enemies,