Remembering James Harrison

On June 1 1999, I was in a plane crash with 28 dear friends.  We were our way home from a music mission trip, when our last flight home into Little Rock, Arkansas crashed upon landing in a severe thunderstorm.  We still mourn the loss of two precious lives from our group.  James Harrison, a friend and peer survived the crash but died trying to escape the wreckage and Rachel Fuller, the second born daughter of our directors died as a result of her severe injuries after being hospitalized.  

I was with both of them in the burning wreckage.  Much of it I cannot remember and it still haunts me that I have no better answers for loved ones left behind.  It has been a long process of healing, now fourteen years and three days of the journey behind me.  I praise God that the horrors of that night, the deep depression of the the days and months after, and the losses incurred no longer define (constrict, suffocate, consume) my days.  Indeed, I go days, even months, without remembering despite what might seem to be the near constant reminder of grafted skin and a chronic cough from smoke inhalation.  By my God's amazing grace, the life event that once threatened to forever rule my every waking moment is now just another chapter of the entire story of my life.  Some carry scars on the inside, and some of the outside, but if true healing is earnestly sought after and fiercely fought for, I have found that true survivors are not the sum total of the ills and crimes done to us, but the beautiful synergy that comes from entrusting the worthless pile of pain into the scarred hands of the only One who can trade it for things priceless.

A wise woman once told me "In God's economy, pain is never wasted.  EVER."

But it is good to remember.  The past few days I have been thinking of our friend, James Harrison who died June 1, 1999.  He saved my life.  A little over five years ago I entered into another season of digging deeper into my pain and sorrow to finally try and break free of it.  I spent nearly every Monday during the fall and winter of 2007 writing about my memories and then meeting with a wise counselor to try and unpack deeply entrenched sorrow and gripping grief in which I was still drowning.  The following entry I wrote one chilly, grey day in Sibley Music Library in downtown Rochester about my friend, our friend, James Harrison.  I needed to remember, because I found myself in the process of forgetting.  The horror and grief and loss and pain may (must?) be embraced, honored, and left behind, but the memories of the people must not.

So today, I post this in honor of my friend, James Arvin Harrison, who truly exemplified with his life this verse:  

"Greater love hath no man than this,  that a man lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13 (KJV)

And he did.  For me.

This begins what I wrote in the fall of 2007:

James Arvin Harrison was my friend. 

            I am not sure where to place this chapter, but his story must be told.  I have wanted to tell this story for a long time, for I fear that he is being forgotten.  While it is it something that may well be inevitable, for we are all on our way to being forgotten, I want to do everything I can to tell you about this young man, my friend.

            “James, listen.  I don’t know how else to say it – but I DON’T want to go out with you.” I said gently in a rare moment of complete frankness.  James Harrison and I had entered Ouachita the same year, fall of 1995 and were both music majors.  Entering freshman in the music department ended up knowing each other quite well, for we had a block of basic classes that served to weed out those who truly desired to work to pursue music as a discipline from those who merely liked to sing or play.  James was in many of my classes and we were in Singers together.  Singers was a 30 - 40 member choral group that traveled together several times a semester as well as toured internationally about every other summer.  James sang bass.  It fit him.  He was tall and big with dark bushy hair and thick glasses.  His appearance would have been much more imposing had he not had a slight birth defect that left one shoulder stooped beneath the other one.  He carried himself with an air of almost apology.  Almost like he was sorry for taking up too much space, and always seemed to be trying to make himself small or unnoticed. 

            Since my freshman year, I could tell that every once in a while, James would get the notion that he was sweet on me.  Honestly, I think I was in a rotation of three or four gals he had his eye on.  James was a dear young man, generous, compassionate, a servant through and through – but nothing in our encounters left me with a desire to be pursued romantically by him.  There was just nothing there.  It all came to a head my junior year, when he asked me out, yet again, and was most insistent.  I was not too keen on the idea of making him angry or feeling rejected, but I would not yield, “James, I am not just saying this, I want to be your friend.  Nothing more.  But I truly value your friendship, please don’t make that awkward.”  As I feared, the next time I saw him I met an icy glance and things remained chilly between us for a while. 

            Our senior year, the silence began to melt.  James got a new church gig with a tiny country congregation not too far from Arkadelphia.  I wish I could remember the name of the church and town, but it escapes me.  For the first time, perhaps ever, he found a place to belong completely.  A group of people who welcomed him and accepted him and appreciated every gift he could offer.  I watched him blossom as he began to more fully discover God’s calling upon his life.  There was even rumor that a young woman in the congregation had set her cap for him.  I know it felt nice to be pursued. 

            I am not too sure how it got started, but we began to meet for lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays the spring of our senior years.  We went early, as soon as the cafeteria opened around 11:00.  We would sit and eat together, talking about all the exciting things going on in our worlds.  I even got on to him a little bit about things such as how he handled his finances and being behind in so many classes.  We truly became friends.  I think in some ways, it felt almost sibling like, so great was the comfort and camaraderie between us.  Even when James Cheng and I started being interested in each other, it was much later in the spring before even he intruded into James Harrison and my sacred lunchtime conversations and accountability. 

            Because of my work-study job, I had a key to the music building.  Whenever I got the inkling on a random Friday or Saturday night when the music building was guaranteed to be deserted, I would sneak over long after my normal practice hours and creep into the dark recital hall.  I had long discovered that my key worked on those doors as well.  With my arms full of scores and books, I would flip on the minimum number of lights and enjoy an hour or so of practice, if you could call it that.  I thought of it as a private time of worship.  I may be practicing a Puccini aria, but as the silvery sound of my unaccompanied voice filled the empty room, I would often fall to my knees in praise, singing solely to my Maker.  I so enjoyed the closeness of the emptiness, the privacy of the stillness, the strange intimacy of a place normally so public.  I would linger over difficult passages, or just sing whatever came to mind and heart.  On more than one occasion, I would sometimes feel as if I was being watched, and on more than one occasion, I caught James Harrison creeping down the back steps from the recording booth high above.  Sheepishly he would make some excuse for needing to find this or that recording for his work-study job.  At 10:00, on a Friday night.

            He always carried peppermints in his pockets.  He loved handing them out to anyone who was around, and often you would see peers or professors hitting him up for one.  He discovered years before that I liked the green kind, and not surprisingly, he always handed me a green one without asking.  He told me over one of our lunches that at his new church job the kids lovingly called him “The Candy Man” and would flock to him before and after services.  I knew most of his story, the parts that he shared openly.  He was jokingly referred to as “Puck” growing up.  It was an acronym for Pop-Up-Camper-Kid.  His parents had retired and moved closer to family in Arkansas and resided in a camper while their house was being built.  It was then, in that pop-up camper in the autumn of their lives when their other children were long grown and gone that James Harrison was conceived.  He often jested about how other kids got to play fetch with their dads when they were little – but he had to “fetch” everything for his aging father.  I remember meeting Mr. Harrison, a slightly stooped gray-headed soft-spoken man and his fiery, delightfully outspokenly country, younger wife Reba on Singers trips to northern Arkansas churches.  They beamed their pleasure when they saw James decked out in his black tuxedo with the choir.

            James filmed my senior recital for me on April 29, 1999.  Late that night, after my recital I was unable to go back to my room and admit the day was actually over, so I slipped by the computer lab and checked email on my way home to my dorm room.  There was an email from him, my friend James Harrison.  I don’t know why I did it at the time, but I printed it.  I wanted to keep it forever.  I am so glad I did. 

            From:                          “Arv”

            Organization:              Ouachita Baptist University

            To:                              DELTA/MAD30236

            Date sent:                    Thu, 29 April 1999 23:04:13 CST

            Subject:                     Recital

            Kristin,

Your recital was magnificent.  Thank you so much for all of your hard work that you have done to prepare it for us.  Please know that the videotape was recorded in a dumb machine operated by a feeble human.  Even if it were done by a pro, there is no way it could have captured your angelic beauty—both in appearance, and in sound.  Thank you for sharing your God-given talents with us, but most of all, thank you for the privilege of calling you friend.

Arv

James Harrison

OBU Box 4342

Arkadelphia, AR 71998

(870)-245-4342

            James Arvin Harrison was my friend. 

This ends what I wrote over five years ago.

  

In a story I have yet to tell completely in prose, James Harrison saved my life.  I live today because he called for me on the floor of a burning aircraft when I was 22 years old and had lain down to die.  Today I woke up and touched the hand of James Cheng, my husband of 13 years and rolled over to wrap myself in his warmth and faithful love.  I look up from my laptop to gather in a tear-filled glimpse the beautiful faces of the three children I get the honor of mothering.  And today I will again revisit the campus where I first met James Arvin Harrison, the grounds we walked, the music building in which we learned, and I remember him.  I hope this has given you opportunity to honor his memory if you knew him, and admire his beautiful life if you did not.

            In a testimony on the music mission trip that ended in a plane crash he told us that the verse his parents used to pick his name was simply this:

“James, a servant of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ,” James 1:1 (NIV)

            And he was.