Only the good die young.

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love
--Bruce Springsteen, "Into the Fire"

  I knew two people named Art Canning. The first was a brash boy genius whose talent and intelligence were matched if not exceeded by his own arrogance, ambition and self-absorption. (Please note, some people might consider this a case of noticing the speck in my brother's eye while ignoring the plank in my own. To that charge, I plead no contest.)

The first Art Canning was starting to disappear as he matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania and mature into an adult. However, a diagnosis of Hodgkin's Disease in 2000, when the world was his oyster, sped along the process.

The second was a man, humbled before God and his fellow human beings, caring, considerate, who tried to live a right life and pass along an inspirational message in the face of horrendous tragedy. His insurmountable ego was replaced with an indomitable spirit. If in the first Art Canning, I saw too much of myself, I didn't see enough of myself in the second. He handled cancer with a humor, class and optimism I can only hope for on my best days. He was my hero.

But while cancer helped the first Art Canning disappear, it also took the second from us. Frederick Arthur Canning III died Tuesday night. His funeral was Friday, the day before what would have been his 26th birthday. I was honored to serve as a pallbearer.

Art and I went to school together, but we didn't get to know each other until I was in fifth grade and he was in fourth. We were both identified as gifted, and placed in a special program for the Youngstown City Schools. When I was in eighth grade, Art's family moved around the corner from our new house on Wilkinson Avenue. We carpooled to rehearsals for a Shakespeare Sampler, and our families became friends. Art was one of the gang of guys who played basketball in our driveway and shot pool in our finished basement.

We were cut from the same bolt of cloth, chasing the brass ring. I was editor of the high school paper, but only after Art was editor-in-chief. I was president of the National Honors Society. He was class and choir president. I was a National Merit Scholar. He went to an Ivy League school.

As was the case with many of the people I knew in high school, our paths diverged in college, as I went west to Bowling Green and he went east to Philadelphia. We'd catch up with each other on occasion during summers or college breaks.

He continued his drive until his religious awakening. He righted himself. I tried to self-destruct. I smoked, drank and stared into the abyss long enough that it started to stare back.

John F. Kennedy once said, "Life is unfair." If that was apparent to a man who had known nothing but wealth and privilege all his life, what hope was there for the rest of us?

Early in 2000, Art was poised for graduation and bigger and better things. He had a job lined up on Wall Street and was in his last semester of college when he started to slow down. He was feeling tired and sick, and thought it might have been mono.

It was Stage IV Hodgkin's Disease, a cancer that attacks the lymph nodes. As he was quick to point out, there was no Stage V. He graduated magna cum laude in May after a bank of chemotherapy, came home for radiation treatment and left for Manhattan. He started a Web site, www.artcanning.com, to keep us all apprised. He wrote like a business student, I often told him, giving him grammar and punctuation pointers.

The cancer came back, and early in 2001, Art got a stem cell transplant. He was too sick to come home for a benefit dinner for him. It was supposed to be a small gathering of friends and family. The line for the spaghetti dinner went out the doors of the Brownlee Woods Presbyterian Church. A small army of volunteers were mobilized for the more than 1,000 people who showed up.

The cancer came back, and he was preparing to move home. He had a going-away party one Monday night in September, and slept late the next day while all hell was breaking loose three miles away, across the East River from his Brooklyn apartment. He watched the World Trade Towers collapse from the roof of his building as the rest of the country learned what he had figured out nearly two years earlier: that we are all mortals, and our time on earth is short.

Early in 2002, he got a bone marrow transplant. That summer, I visited him in New York City. He still had the udder in his chest, where drugs were administered for treatment, but he remained unbowed. Art was starting to make plans for the next stage in his life. A bunch of his friends were in town, and I had traveled with a couple of my buddies. We went to a microbrewery near Union Square, and he led us to dessert at Venero's in midtown. After that, I thought he was going to live forever.

Sadly, it was not to be. Around Thanksgiving of that year, he felt a pain in his lower back. The cancer had returned, and there were no more treatment options. His health declined, but not his faith. He knew God had given him cancer for a reason. I marveled when he called the disease that would make him die a long, painful death a blessing. It made him realize what was important in life. Money, power and prestige go away. The people who love you don't.

They say that a man's greatness can be measured during times of crisis. Art and I were both told in high school that we were destined for greatness. I'm not sure if I've lived up to that, but Art has. He fought the good fight. He ran the race. He kept the faith.

They also say that times of conflict and struggle reveal who your friends are. Friends have come out of the woodwork for Art in his moment of need, and before he died, he made sure that people would pay that kindness to others. Last March, he put on a benefit for the Art Canning Foundation, a nonprofit group he started for people in straits just as dire as his, without the blessing of his support network.

Another 1,000 people showed up for the benefit in March, which also saw the release of his self-published book. Being a Wharton Business School graduate, he knew how to delegate, and he turned the manuscript, culled from the entries on his Web site, over to his friend the writer (that would be me). A few well-turned phrases are mine, as are a lot of punctuation marks, but the heart and soul is his.

The book ended with "To be continued." But everyone knew how it would end. Really, that's the only ending in this life, and depending on what you believe, that's not even an ending.

He continued to take chemotherapy to keep the cancer at bay, and felt better enough for a whirlwind tour of his old haunts in New York City that fall. I saw him that Christmas. After more than four years of treatment, including chemo and radiation, he still had more hair than I did.

After the new year, he got sick, and could no longer take chemo. The cancer started to run its course, and he went into the hospital on Feb. 10. I saw him the weekend of Valentine's Day, but I prefer to remember the active Art marshalling a group of friends and leading us around Manhattan and not the one I saw that weekend, who will still haunt me until the day I meet him again in our Father's house with many rooms.

And now I'm trying to make some sense of this all. I like to think there's a lesson Art would want us to take from this. His parents are both educators, and in his better days, Art thought of teaching or the ministry.

Art and I disagreed on many things. He was a Republican. I'm a little more left of center. He's a Steelers and Pirates fan. I root for the Browns and the Indians. But we both appreciated the music of U2, particularly off of "All That You Can'?t Leave Behind." He talked about how the only baggage he carried was all that he can't leave behind. I, on the other hand, felt the strongest message came from "Beautiful Day."

"It's a beautiful day, don't let it get away!"

I try to remember that Art lived more in his 26 years than most people who live two or three times that long. He sang on the beaches of Normandy for the 50th anniversary of D-Day. He danced down the Canyon of Heroes for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. He worked on Wall Street. He went to an Ivy League school. He filled every minute with 60 seconds of distance run.

But not only did he live, he tried to live a right life. Maybe that's the lesson we're supposed to take from all of this. I've examined my life since his diagnosis, and came up at first with some survivor's guilt. I've changed since then, for the better, in my opinion. Just as living well is the best revenge, it's the best tribute to those we knew and loved who went on before us and before their time. I like to think that's the lesson Art would want us to take from this.

I tried to make Art a better writer. He made me a better person. I got the better end of that deal. It's almost unfair.