taking it all the way to the party convention in Los Angeles.

"I really thought, 'What's the matter with you?' " recalled his son. "We're Catholic. We're Irish. JFK seemed like the coolest guy I had ever seen in my life."

Making an impression

At the time, Doyle was a student at Madison West High School, where he seemed to be into everything. Basketball. Tennis. Student government.

The big man on campus.

"He was a sports star, everybody knew he was a brain, and his parents were famous," said Andy Cohn, who was several years behind Doyle.

"He was an easy-going, level guy," said John Norsetter, another friend. "There was never any sense of being in constant motion, but he always seemed to get things done."

Norsetter and Doyle were on the basketball team, whereDoyle, a guard, was the unquestioned star. A broken arm sidelined him and - everyone is convinced - cost the team a berth in the state tournament.

The circle of friends included Jessica Laird, whose family had moved to Madison a few years earlier. Her father had attended UW with Jim's father, the two squaring off for student body president - an election that Doyle had won.

Jessica and Jim were friends. They would talk, trade stories, hang out. And, after graduation in 1963, they would go their separate ways: Jim to Stanford, Jessica to Northwestern.

That fall, the assassination of Kennedy hit both of them hard. Their whole generation, really. It reinforced a sense of purpose, of the need to do something.

For Doyle, that sense had been there for a