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Jon Sheehy and I often talked about playing tennis together sometime. He would be making a deft adjustment to my glasses while we talked about tennis and other topics. Sometimes he would ask about something I had written in my column, a question, perhaps, about how my son was doing in Colorado or something about our mutual connection to eastern Wisconsin: Both he and his wife of 30 years, Cheri, grew up in the Reedsville area and Gretchen grew up in Brillion a few miles away.

His unfailing friendliness was certainly a reason why Gretchen and I have been longtime customers at the Shopko Optical, where he was manager of the department.

I realized we were not alone in our reaction to Jon when I heard that some 400 people attended a memorial service for him at Bethany Evangelical Free Church last month. He died June 1 of a heart attack while playing tennis in Onalaska. He was only 51 years old.

We only knew Jon as customers, but we learned that he was considerate. For example, he sent an e-mail to Gretchen earlier this year recounting how her name came up in a conversation with his wife’s Aunt Gertie in Reedsville.

Gertie was talking about a friend of hers who was a teacher in Grimms. Recalling an article that I wrote some time ago about Gretchen’s mom that mentioned her teaching in Grimms, Jon told Gertie he knew her friend’s daughter. Jon wrote to Gretchen: “I told Gertie that I would say hi to you for her. Small world, eh?”

I’ve been pondering the news of Jon’s interrupted life since I came across his obituary while going through back issues of newspapers after a recent vacation. The obituary gave a clue to Jon’s character that I wasn’t aware of: He was a member of the Bethany Church Deacon’s Council and later became deacon chairman.

“He had a way of making you feel better in his presence,” said Greg Childress, worship pastor at Bethany. I had called Bethany to get more information about Jon and learned that Childress had been playing tennis with him the day he died.

“I’ve only been in town for a year and in the last few months Jon encouraged me to get back into tennis… He loaned me an up-to-date racquet. He was always very encouraging,” Childress said.

They had been paired in an informal round-robin doubles tournament and were in their last match of the day when Jon collapsed and died in spite of CPR by his fellow players and a quick response to their 911 call.

I regret that I didn’t get the opportunity to play tennis with Jon; as with most sports, you can tell a lot about people by playing a game with them and that’s especially true of tennis.

I asked Childress if I was correct in my supposition that Jon would be the type of player who would give his opponent the benefit of the doubt in a close line call.

“Absolutely,” he responded.