# Help for a fellow hunter's family...



## wasatchmtnbike (Oct 16, 2007)

I also posted this in the Big Game discussion. I hope it's OK to post it here also.

My brother sent this to me and I thought that my fellow hunters would like to know about it. Hope this is OK with you guys to post this.

Join 570 KNRS for a great evening of inspiring Christmas Music on Saturday, December 1st.

Bob Lonsberry will host the show, and our music will be performed by the group Joshua Creek. Tickets are just $5.70 each, with proceeds benefiting the Jim Hall Family Fund.

When: Saturday, December 1st 7:30pm (doors open at 7:00pm)
Where: Miller Free Enterprise Center Auditorium at Salt Lake Community College (Miller Campus) -- 9750 South, 300 West in Sandy ( map )
Tickets: $5.70 each Link here -> http://deseretbook.com/tickets/joshua

Following is Jim Hall's story as told by Bob Lonsberry at http://www.lonsberry.com/writings.cfm?story=2257&go=4

The Story of Jim Hall:

Jim Hall was laid off in September.

Five little kids, one of them sick, a new house, and a stay-at-home wife. And the company does one of those eliminate-the-division things and everybody got their walking papers.

Including Jim.

That hurt. It was a loss of money and a loss of benefits. The life insurance ended on the first of October and the health insurance ended on the first of November and, as anyone could see, that hurt.

But they're church people and optimistic people and Jim was the sort of guy who'd do anything for anybody and he had the knack for being handy. There wasn't anything he couldn't do and there wasn't anything he wouldn't try.

Like hunting.

He was pretty good at it. Like he was good at being an outdoorsman. Until a few months ago he worked with the Scout troop at church.

But the point is he was good at hunting and Utah's deer season is open now and, when you don't have a paycheck coming in, some venison for the freezer is a blessing.

So last Thursday he took to the mountains.

He left his home in Payson and drove out to something called the Nebo loop. It's way off back in the mountains, the real mountains, where peaks and valleys unfold in seeming endless succession in every direction.

That's where he went hunting.

With Braxton, his 6-year-old. It was father-son time and hunting time and they drove the family pick-up truck off into a desolate place where there wasn't quite road enough to handle it.

And trying to back himself out of a fix on the side of a mountain the physics of the thing didn't work and it began to roll.

With Jim and his little boy inside.

It came to rest on Jim's side.

He was banged up a bit but Braxton was OK and the two of them crawled out of the wreckage.

It was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and they were in the middle of nowhere. Late fall, way high in the mountains, no help in sight, with dusk about three hours away and a little boy by your side asking his daddy what he's going to do.

That's a tight spot.

So Jim Hall rummaged through the truck, putting their gear in his backpack and gathering up his gun and ammunition. It hurt to strap on the pack, it hurt a lot, his back didn't seem right and it pained him, but he cinched the ruck down and picked up the gun and took his little boy's hand and began to walk.

They began to walk overland.

Over this mountain and the valley beyond and the mountain on the other side and the valley on the other side of that.

At one point there was something that seemed to be shadowing them in the bushes so Jim fired a round from his deer gun into the ground. He figured there was a mountain lion sizing them up and he wanted to scare him off but he didn't want to frighten the boy so he told him that he fired the weapon to signal for help.

As the day died down and they continued to hike overland it got dark and cold and Jim wouldn't stop. Braxton said he was tired and wanted to rest but his dad said they had to push on, he said they couldn't stop, they couldn't rest.

So they sang. They sang and they prayed. Songs from church and home, and prayers as they walked, spoken aloud to a God and Father above.

Jim must have been in pain the whole time. And he could have been feeling weak and nauseas. He never said, but it stands to reason.

Because what Jim didn't know was that his back was broken and his liver was bleeding.

All he knew was that he was a dad and he had his little boy and he had to get that little boy out of the mountains before the cold or something else killed him. Stuff like that will focus a man and push him to things that, on paper, don't seem possible.

Like that 10-hour hike. Fifteen miles over a succession of ridges and mountains. Fifteen miles until they could see the lights of little Mona and they got to where they could flag down a trucker.

This father and son, praying aloud and singing their hymns.

It was the wee hours of the morning before Jim Hall and his son got home and each fell exhausted into bed.

The boy was still asleep in the morning when Jim got up to go a job interview. His mom drove him and coming back he said that he thought he got the job.

Which is good news.

But by that night he didn't feel good. He was crashing. He said he needed to go to the hospital. His family ran him in and the x-ray showed the spinal injury, a crushed vertebra, and the doctors prescribed him pills to control the pain until they could schedule a surgery. With the procedure slated for another day, they sent him home.

Where weak and exhausted he went to bed.

That was probably an hour or two after midnight.

When his wife awakened in the morning, he was beside her, still and silent. Still and silent and gone. He had passed away in the night.

That was two days before what would have been his 34th birthday.

That was 27 days after his life insurance was canceled.

That was 11 years before his oldest child graduates from high school.

James Timothy Hall's last two acts were fulfillment of his duties as a dad. He saved his son by walking him out of the mountains, and he went to a job interview. Protect and provide, in that order, and those are the last things Jim did.

And that's the story of a brave man, a man who did his duty.

But the story is only partly about Jim, it is also about his family, the people he left behind. The family he will lead in eternity, but which must live without him now. His sweetheart and their five kids, one of whom is sick, alone in the world, with the promise of a Social Security check that probably won't cover the mortgage.

This is the story of a hero and a tragedy. A tragedy involving the loss of a life and the loss of a love and the loss of a provider.

A fund has been set up at Zions Bank in the name of James Timothy Hall. A frightened young widow would be grateful for every dime she can get.


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