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A few years ago, the press carried a heartrending story of a
young father who shot himself in a tavern telephone booth. James
Lee had called a Chicago newspaper and told a reporter he had sent
the paper a manila envelope outlining his story. The reporter
frantically tried to trace the call, but was too late. When the
police arrived the young man was slumped in the booth with a
bullet through his head.
In his pockets they found a child's crayon drawing, much folded
and worn. On it was written, "Please leave in my coat pocket. I
want to have it buried with me." The drawing was signed in
childish print by his daughter, Shirley Lee, who had perished in a
fire just five months before. Lee was so grief-stricken he had
asked total strangers to attend his daughter's funeral so she
would have a nice service. He said there was no family to attend,
since Shirley's mother had been dead since the child was two.
Speaking to the reporter before his death, the heartbroken
father said that all he had in life was gone and he felt so alone.
He gave his modest estate to the church Shirley had attended and
said, "Maybe in ten or twenty years, someone will see one of the
plaques and wonder who Shirley Ellen Lee was and say, 'Someone
must have loved her very, very much."' The grieving father could
not stand loneliness or the loss so he took his own life. He felt
it better to be dead than live in an impersonal world.
How many James Lees are there in this world? They don't wear
signs saying "I'm lonely--will you help me?" Let's discover these
in His name.
--James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale
House Publishers, Inc, 1988), p. 319.
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