I met Jim Byrd on April 10, 1999 at a funeral visitation being held for his friend...
It was difficult for me to meet with grieving families after Jerry left, but physical contact with anything closely associated with him seemed soothe me. I usually wore his sports watch, but this time my jacket pocket contained the "SEVEN" essay that I'd completed for this website on the night prior. Many times throughout the evening I'd discretely slipped my hand into my pocket to palm those folded pages.
During one of the times I'd conversed with Jim, we'd been finalizing details of the military rites that were scheduled for the next day. During lull in the conversation, he became lost in thought and then began to recite a verse. His voice was gentle, but filled with such resounding conviction that I was near overwhelmed with memories of the fervor in Jerry's voice and sparks of emotion in his eyes when he'd spoken of America's freedoms and the daily sacrifices made by our military troops and their families.
When I asked Jim to repeat the verse during rites for his friend the next day, I was surprised to learn that he'd written it near 40 years ago for his little brother, a member of the U.S.A.F. The verse has been published in major magazines and and had some time ago been adopted as the official U.S.A.F. Hymn.
A week or so later, Jim called to say that he'd written a tribute for Jerry. Without prior knowledge that the #7 had been significantly tied to pivotal events of my son's life, or that on the evening that we'd met my pocket had cradled another "SEVEN" essay, Jim was strongly inspired to use "7" as theme for his tribute. We were pleased by his uncanny personalization of this verse when he called to read it to me, and can't imagine a way it might have been more precisely associated with Sgt. Jerry Wayne Jeffries.
