My cousin Kenneth Robert Warner was born on Jan. 1, 1949 – 65 years ago today. He died on July 13, 1971, when a drunken driver crashed into the bicycle he was riding back to his apartment in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was 22 years old.

Kenny was the older brother I never had. He was my mentor, best friend and confidant, the person who introduced me to Playboy, Bob Dylan and marijuana. He always treated me as an equal, even though I wasn’t, and he was a constant source of sound advice and cheerful encouragement.

Kenny played a mean piano and was president of his high-school class in Millburn, New Jersey. He was movie-star handsome, extremely popular with girls and friendly with everyone, from the football star to the class nerd. He was very mature and responsible for his age, always looking after his three younger siblings, working part-time jobs and buying gifts for friends and family members.

He was no plastic saint, however. He kept a stack of Playboys under his bed, occasionally smoked pot and rode his motorcycle well above the speed limit. He liked to have a good time, but never at the expense of others.

Since that awful day 43 years ago – as a baseball fan, I always remember it was the same day that Reggie Jackson hit his titanic All-Star homer in nearby Detroit — I don’t think a week has passed without me thinking of Kenny. The death of any young person is tragic, but the death of someone as promising as my cousin is especially haunting.

Kenny’s father, Lew, was one of my dad’s three brothers. They grew up in Newark, New Jersey, in an exceptionally close family. Since my only sibling was a sister and I desperately wanted a brother, Kenny filled that role for me.

When I was a high-school junior and Kenny was a sophomore at the University of Michigan, he invited me to visit him in Ann Arbor. It was the fall of 1968 and I can still remember my arrival at the Detroit airport. The Detroit Tigers had won the World Series the previous day in St. Louis and they arrived at the airport about the same time as I did. Thousands of fans were waiting for their baseball heroes, and it was a mob scene as I tried to find my cousin in the crowd. I wandered around the terminal for an hour or so before I finally spotted Kenny, frantically waving his arms to get my attention.

I hopped on his motorcycle and we rode to Ann Arbor, less than an hour away. There I had the best weekend of my young life. I attended Kenny’s English Literature class, where they talked about authors and books I’d never heard of. We went to a party where I smoked pot for the first time, and on Saturday we attended the Michigan-Michigan State football game before a boisterous crowd of more than 100,000.

Kenny also set me up with a gorgeous coed. I was very shy around women then, so I was intimidated. We went on a double date with Kenny and his girlfriend, going to dinner and then watching “The Graduate’’ at the old State Theatre. When Mrs. Robinson flashed her breasts to Benjamin, the audience gasped and I turned beet red. I prayed that my date wasn’t looking at me.

When the weekend was over, I didn’t want to leave. I fell in love with Michigan and would have gone there if they had offered me a basketball scholarship. While I was a high-school star, I wasn’t rated highly enough to play at a Big Ten power like Michigan. Instead I went to George Washington University, where the NBA somehow managed to overlook me.

Three years later, Kenny was a newlywed getting ready to attend Michigan’s law school and I was working at a summer camp for underprivileged kids in Glen Spey, New York. The morning after Kenny died, I got a call from my mother telling me about the accident. I immediately took a bus to the Port Authority in New York City, where my grandparents (who lived in the Bronx) were waiting for me. Together we went to Kenny’s boyhood home in Millburn – I was in such a daze, I can’t remember how we got there — where I was greeted by a roomful of relatives who looked like ghosts. It was the first time that I had to deal with the death of a loved one, and I had no idea how to react. I cried, but mostly I felt numb. My uncle Lew loaned me a suit, tie and shoes for the funeral. We were about the same height then, but I was pretty skinny, so the jacket could have doubled as a life preserver.

Lew was the funniest man I ever met, a person who would greet children by licking their faces, play practical jokes and write mock letters threatening to sue his nieces and nephews. He once tried to hire a helicopter to deliver a fake summons to my cousin Adam’s school, but Adam’s no-nonsense mom nixed the idea.

In 1964, Lew took Kenny and me to Game 3 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium. My uncle kept making preposterous predictions about what would happen on the field, leading to a series of losing bets. By the ninth inning, he owed me $50, which to a 12-year-old seemed like a million bucks. When Mickey Mantle led off the bottom of the ninth with the Yankees and Cardinals tied 1-1, Lew bet me double or nothing that Mick would win the game with a first-pitch homer into the upper deck in right field. I immediately agreed, knowing that the odds of that happening were astronomical. Sure enough, Mantle took a mighty swing at the first pitch from knuckleballer Barney Schultz and blasted the ball to the exact spot Lew had predicted. As Mantle rounded the bases, I looked at my uncle with awe. Kenny just shook his head and smiled. Knowing I felt crushed about losing the bet, Lew gave me the $50 anyway.

I remember almost nothing about Kenny’s funeral, though I’m told I was a pallbearer. He was buried in a cemetery not far from my current home in Old Bridge, New Jersey. I visited his grave several times, but after his mother Lynn died, his body was exhumed and his remains were cremated so his ashes could be mixed with his mom’s, as she wished. (His bronze grave marker rests in our backyard garden.)

I often think about what Kenny would have become. With his good looks, intelligence and outgoing personality, he could have been a great lawyer or politician. Of course, we’ll never know, which is the saddest part of all.

Kenny lived to see a man on the moon, but he never used a cell phone or a personal computer. He knew about the breakup of the Beatles, but not the murder of John Lennon. The Vietnam War was still going strong when he died. He never heard of Watergate.

The man who killed Kenny didn’t spend a single day in jail: He was sentenced to three years probation for manslaughter. When the drunken driver asked the court to end his probation early so he could get a small-business loan, my forgiving uncle and aunt supported his request.

Though they had three other children and were only in their 40s when Kenny died, Lynn and Lew were never the same. And neither was I.

Kenny’s death had a profound impact on me. It triggered the first of what turned out to be many severe depressions, which I learned much later were the result of a bipolar disorder. It made me acutely aware of the fleeting nature of life and persuaded me to never pass up an exciting adventure or experience, no matter how risky or inconvenient. It made me cherish my friends and family, though my self-destructive behavior often put a strain on those relationships.

Most of all, it taught me to never take anything or anyone for granted.

Kenny was a great teacher, in death as well as life.