In today's Times, Kerry and Edwards each spin a formative life experience: We all have those moments when we see life with stunning clarity. I had had many moments before that night: experiencing the effects of segregation in the South during the 1950's and 60's; watching my dad try to learn statistics from the math show on public television with the hope of a promotion at the mill; my mom refinishing furniture to help me go to college; that first day I entered college, and the day I had to leave Clemson because I couldn't afford the tuition; meeting my wife, Elizabeth; and the birth of my children. Those were personal. That evening in December 1984 with E. G. in an empty room on the ninth floor of the Buncombe County courthouse, overlooking downtown Asheville, N.C., was the moment the personal and professional collided. I will always remember what I told E. G. that night: $750,000 was less than he deserved. It was less than he needed ? and the jury knew it, too. E. G. sat there, his otherwise expressionless eyes welling up, and then in a slow and halting manner, he typed, "I trust you." I fought to restrain an empty crying. I didn't even have to read the telegram; I knew that Dick Pershing, my childhood and college friend, was dead. For days on the empty Pacific I could barely stand the knowledge that I would never see him again. It was the loss of someone irreplaceable, a loss of innocence, a loss of the sense of invincibility and bravado that young men have as they go to war. Soon after, off Vietnam, we learned that Senator Eugene McCarthy and a band of college students living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches had rocked the foundations of the political world in the New Hampshire primary, sending the message to President Lyndon Johnson that he couldn't be president any more. Weeks later we heard of the death of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated while campaigning for justice in America. We knew that cities across the country had exploded in riots and much of Washington itself was in flames. There was war all around us and war at home.