Patty Butler Spiers said good-bye to a hero and a friend:

This was my speech to a packed church of friends and family for Captain Jim Fore.

Words for Jim Fore…..April 12, 2011

I am Patty Butler Spiers of a small non profit that has a mission to record storytelling from those who lived through historical events. That is how I met Jim Fore. He had a very good story, and he told it very well. Richard Randall seized the moment by having Jim Fore tell his incredible tale in the cock pit of a B-17. And we have that on camera.

I am one of the directors of Bomber’s Moon, Girls Beneath the Bombs, a Rocky Mountain PBS show that aired twice in 2009, starring women who were bombed in Europe and Asia and the American bombers. Jim was one of our stars in the show.

About a year ago, I sat where Mrs. Fore sits right now. My husband suddenly died of a massive heart attack. Exactly one month later, my father also died. I was a widow before my mother was a widow.

I have been asked over this year how I deal with the loss of two men who were in my daily life. Here is my answer: I go to the interviews we did with Jim Fore. And I fast forward to the part where we ask him: How did you deal with living in a concentration camp for those months? How did you cope?You were so young… And then I absorbed the words of my friend, Jim Fore. DON’T LET YOUR MIND GO THERE AND STAY THERE. DON’T DWELL ON THAT WHICH HURTS TOO MUCH. CONTROL YOUR MIND.

I thank God for knowing this man, he has blessed my life both professionally and personally. And I will end with the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from his poem, FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS :

WHEN THE HOURS OF THE DAY ARE NUMBERED,
AND THE VOICES OF THE NIGHT
WAKE THE BETTER SOUL THAT SLUMBERED,
TO A HOLY, CALM DELIGHT;

AS THE EVENING LAMPS ARE LIGHTED,
AND LIKE PHANTOMS GRIM AND TALL
SHADOWS FROM THE FITFUL FIRELIGHT
DANCE UPON THE PARLOR WALL;

THEN THE FORMS OF THE DEPARTED
ENTER AT THE OPEN DOOR;
THE BELOVED, THE TRUE HEARTED,
COME TO VISIT ME ONCE MORE.