"Mister Lennon ..."

Those were the last words John Lennon heard. In the twinkling of an eye, he was gone and Dec. 8, 1980, was damned as one of those terrible dates that is forevermore synonymous with tragedy.

Twenty-five years ago today, John Lennon died, murdered by a sociopathic former fan who fired four bullets into his back. The loss was palpable, not only to the rock 'n' roll world that Lennon had changed irrevocably with the Beatles, but to a generation that had lost its most outspoken icons one by one.

"The dream is over," Lennon once sang, and here it was, true.

That he was in the flowering stages of a comeback to a career he had abandoned in 1975 only made the loss more cruel. His new album, "Double Fantasy," was rising up the charts and had spawned a hit single. Following the events of that Monday night 25 years ago, however, the song "(Just Like) Starting Over" never again sounded as joyous and optimistic.

Lennon's death at age 40 was the final irony of a life fraught with paradoxes. A self-styled "Working Class Hero," he actually grew up in a middle-class neighborhood far better off than his future bandmates. Known for cheekiness and wit during his Beatles days, he was privately moody and occasionally angry and self-loathing. A famed peace activist who wrote the anthem ''Give Peace a Chance,'' he was prone to violent outbursts, especially as a young man, and he unimaginably died violently.

Twenty-five years later, Lennon cannot be easily pigeonholed. He was known primarily as a member of the greatest rock band of all-time, but his solo work and political activism earned acclaim and criticism. He gained mainstream success and acceptance, yet at times pursued an avant-garde career path with wife and soulmate Yoko Ono that appealed to only the most ardent fans.

Fans have their pick of John Lennon legacies: Beatle; political activist; anti-war demonstrator; writer of "Imagine;" martyr. Four decades after the Beatles came to America, a quarter century after his death, his work remains timeless.

''So many things he expressed in the '60s and '70s sound like they could be about now,'' said Sammy Oakey, a Roanoke businessman who enjoys a reputation as one of Roanoke's biggest Beatles fans. He singled out Lennon's anti-Vietnam War anthem, ''Happy Christmas (War is Over),'' which was written 35 years ago, as being particularly timely given the current state of world affairs.

''His music is so fresh, his ideals so relevant. People will still learn a lot from him and will still be influenced by him 50 years from now. His songs, his writings, his poetry are as fresh as the morning paper.''

Here I stand, head in hands

Kat Mills reminded an intimate gathering at The Coffee Mill in Radford that a somber anniversary approached.

''John Lennon died 25 years ago,'' she said as she cradled an acoustic guitar and flipped through the pages in her songbook. ''A lot of singers are going to be singing his songs this week.''

With that, the Blacksburg singer-songwriter plucked out the opening notes of ''Norwegian Wood,'' a Beatles classic credited to John Lennon and Paul McCartney but written mostly by Lennon.

Mills, 34, was not around for the Beatles, and she was only 9 when Lennon was killed. Still, his music and the songs of other 1960s songwriters registers with her in a way much contemporary music does not.

''I was into this music when I came out of the womb,'' said Mills, a singer-songwriter from Blacksburg. She also sang ''Across the Universe'' in tribute to Lennon.

Looking back, Mills sees the cultural timeline that coincides with Lennon's life and death. Born in Liverpool during a German bombing raid in the early days of World War II, Lennon's life seemed to define the times as much as be defined by them. His work with the Beatles shaped the '60s counterculture and fittingly ended in 1970. His '70s output was spotty, mirroring an inconsistent decade for rock. He died just as the 1980s began, a month after Ronald Reagan's election -- dual signs that the times had changed.

Lennon's death ''marked a change, a real shift,'' Mills said. ''The '80s were going to be culturally different. A lot of people had been taken out by the brutality of the '70s. Now, the '80s were here and things were going to be different. The pendulum was shifting.''

I read the news today, oh boy

By now, the details of Lennon's murder are as familiar as the choruses of his songs. His comeback in the fall of 1980 showed promise. He was back in the public eye after taking off five years to care for his and Ono's son, Sean.

The morning of Dec. 8, 1980, Lennon and Ono left their home at the famous Dakota, the apartment complex that had been featured prominently in the horror movie "Rosemary's Baby." As Lennon walked toward his limousine, a young photographer snapped a picture of the singer signing an album cover for a fan.

That fan, we all know now, was Mark David Chapman, a 25-year-old Hawaii resident who had come to New York to kill Lennon. Chapman was a psychologically disturbed man who claimed his Christian beliefs made it necessary to kill Lennon, who had famously sung, "Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try" and that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." Along with a short-barrelled .38-caliber handgun, Chapman carried a copy of J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye." Chapman had come to believe that the book's protagonist, the aimlessly drifting Holden Caulfield, was telling him to wipe out all the "phonies." In Chapman's deranged mind, Lennon was a phony to be wiped out.

Lennon and Ono spent part of the day in a recording studio, working on Ono's song, "Walking on Thin Ice." During the session, record label executive David Geffen popped by to tell Lennon that "Double Fantasy" had gone gold.

Lennon and Ono wrapped up the session and returned to the Dakota about 10:50 p.m. Chapman had waited all day outside the building's entrance after getting Lennon's autograph -- a moment immortalized in a photograph that made its way around the world -- and he spotted the white limo as it turned the corner. He watched Ono get out first, followed by Lennon several seconds later. He stood by as Lennon passed, then announced straightforwardly ...

"Mister Lennon ..."

Chapman dropped into a crouch, according to witnesses, and fired five shots. Four bullets poured through Lennon's back, three tore his left lung, another shattered a shoulder. Lennon collapsed in a dying heap just inside the doorway.

"I'm shot," he managed to say. Chapman dropped the gun and a doorman rushed over and kicked it away. Chapman did not attempt to flee.

"Do you know what you've done?" the doorman cried.

"I just shot John Lennon," Chapman said matter-of-factly.

Police arrived and determined that Lennon was too gravely wounded to wait for an ambulance. Two officers transported him to the hospital, where doctors worked in vain to revive him.

Alan Weiss, a producer for New York's WABC-TV station, happened to be at the hospital after being in a minor motorcycle accident and he was in the emergency room when Lennon arrived. Through the commotion and hysterics, Weiss learned the news. He called the station.

The ABC affiliate then sent word to the network. The news of Lennon's death was broken to the world in a surreal announcement by Howard Cosell during a Monday Night Football game.

John Lennon was dead. The man who wrote ''Help!,'' ''Strawberry Fields Forever,'' ''A Day in the Life,'' ''Revolution,'' ''Imagine'' and so many other defining pieces of a generation's soundtrack was gone; his legacy immortalized.

Oakey, the Roanoker who was a Ferrum College student in 1980, hung a picture of Lennon in his dorm window.

''He was the last person in the world you would think would ever get shot,'' said Oakey, who has made eight Beatles-related trips to Liverpool and London.

Nothing's gonna change my world

Ono still lives in the Dakota apartment she shared with Lennon. She has closely guarded Lennon's work and legacy and has occasionally feuded publicly with McCartney.

Chapman received a sentence of 20 years to life for the murder. He has been up for parole every two years since 2000 and will be again next year.

Tonight in Central Park, near the spot where Lennon was murdered, hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of Lennon fans will gather in a vigil to remember the slain singer, a man who claimed he had no desire to be a leader because, in his words, ''leaders get killed.''

The fans will sing, pray, cry and come together over him.