Constantly dancing and happy. Those were the words Teresa Davis used to describe the brother she knew up until he was 15 years old. In addition to breakdancing, Jon Mareska Jr. seemed to be getting along fine at school and relished the life he had with this friends in the Brookside neighborhood of Tulsa. When he wasn’t practicing with his Brookside Breakers teammates or riding his BMX Mongoose, he was at Henthorne Park, playing basketball, swimming, and listening to old time rock n’ roll like Led Zepplin and Black Sabbath.
But life was beginning to change as the group delved deeper into the party life. According to a Douglas County PSI report, Jon Jr. long battled addiction. A parole officer wrote that he began drinking at age 8 and was exposed to alcohol and drugs when he was even younger. His mother pointed to Jon Sr. as the culprit.
“Before his father and I divorced, his father was a drug dealer, and he used to take my son, who was 4, 5 years old, with him,” LaDonna Thomas said. “I got pissed, and I found a babysistter. He was around drugs at a very young age because of his dad. He was piddling with drugs for a long time. My sister told me he started when he was 7.”
If Jon Jr. was using drugs during the first part of his time in Tulsa, he hid it well. Sharron Jenkins, his first girlfriend, and Teresa Davis said they never saw him consume any sort of narcotic. Drinking, however, was common among the Brookside crew. They sat in the grass at the park, drinking Bicardi and Wild Turkey while listening to KMOD FM 97.5, Tulsa’s go-to rock station.
By 1985, Jon Jr. had lost two important figures in his life. As if not having a relationship with his father wasn’t enough to handle emotionally, Jenkins moved nearly five hours away to Locust Grove, Arkansas, and Teresa Davis moved in with her mother, leaving Jon Jr. alone with his mother and stepfather. He had little interest in hanging around a house with firm rules, spending more and more time with his friends, who began to party hard in the mid-1980s.
Jon Jr. also struggled at Edison High School after his sister left, often fighting. Friend Stephanie Dentis said Jon Jr. was always in trouble and referred to him as a “rule-breaker.” One of his best friends, Tim Livermore, who also attended Edison, said he wasn’t afraid to stand up for himself.
“I never saw a mean side of him, but he would get into fights,” Livermore said. “If you said something the wrong way or he took it the wrong way, he’d fight.”
Some of that had to do with the composition of the high school, which Livermore described as “preppies vs. greasers.”
“Jon did not fit in at school,” Dentis said. “He was vocal, had a temper. We called him Jon Boy or Jon Jon.”
Interesting to learn of Jon’s earlier life, of which I knew nothing about. As a proof-reader in my previous work, I thought I would mention to you: The 3rd paragraph, last sentence needs to be redone. “My sister told he (?)……” I look forward to more.