Welcome

to

Jerry's Place

So just who is this Jerry guy?

Well, you picked the right place to find out. Jerry is really just a normal everyday guy like you and me. As a matter of fact he is alot like me because he is me. I'm glad you stopped by to see the web page that's all about me. It's not really all about me you know. It's more about all of the things that I'm all about. If you browse a while you're likely to find some things that interest you as well. Why not have a look around. Stay as long as you like and come back often.

A little about me:

I sincerely believe that right after God and family, Friends are one of the most important things a person can have in life. A person who has a sincere close personal friend has something far more valuable than all of the glittery gold this world has to offer. Click here and I will tell you about a few of my friends.

Sometimes in life things happen that we do not understand. We may never understand why they happen but we can be assured that God, in His wisdom has a purpose. One morning when I was 19 years old I was on my way to the grocery store where I worked. I was on my motorcycle and a pickup truck pulled in front of me and stopped suddenly. I collided with the truck, breaking my neck and suffering a head injury and other major trauma. I spent the next few years between hospitals, rehab centers, doctors and all manner of fun and exciting things related to spinal cord injury. I did most of my rehab at The Shepherd Center, one of the best rehab centers in the country.

I also had therapy for a couple of months at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation and later went back to their independant living program and their driver training program.

After rehab I had an opportunity to go through a computer programming course that was a joint effort of the Georgia Department of Rehabilitation, Good Will Industries and Georgia Tech. (Go Tech!) It was scary. I had never lived away from home before and now that I was so physically limited I wondered if I could do it. Qualifying for the program was not meant to be easy. Only 17 out of 100 or so applicants could be selected each year but I was one. The training was 40 hours per week of computer programming and the outcome for those who made it was not a degree but job placement.

I lived by myself in a tiny apartment in the wrong end of town and had to hire assistants to help me get dressed, into and out of bed and related activities. Life wasn't always easy, some times it was down right scary and depressing but I learned that hanging in there was always worth whatever it took. I made lots of friends while I was there but never have I ever had friends as true as Ed & Annie Butchart.

When I finished school I moved back to my home town of Augusta, GA and landed a job with the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center as a computer programmer. I spent the next 10 years in Augusta. That's where I met Heidi, Tyffani, Wendi, Serena and lots of other dear friends not listed here. I bought a high tech van and learned to drive it. None of this would have been possible without my very special friend Tom Till. He owned and operated a local ambulance service and when I was struggling against impossible odds to try to get my life restarted, he was the true friend who really cared. He bought a computer and hired me to write a software

package to help him run the business. Tom, his family, and the wonderful friends I made while working there helped me in so many ways to get back on my feet again. Although both of us have moved on from that phase in our lives, we still keep in touch and hopefully always will.

I love the outdoors and spent many hours relaxing and enjoying Augusta's Riverwalk. I was there to see when the Olympic torch was run through Augusta. I have many fond memories that were created there.

There are times in life when you just know that it is time to move on. Nearing the end of my tenth year working at the VA Hospital in Augusta, I began to feel that call. Change was in the air. Many changes were taking place at work, I was having more and more difficulty dealing with the cold winters, driving was becoming more difficult, expensive, and dangerous and I knew it was time. When the employment vacancy at the VA Medical Center in West Palm Beach was announced I knew deep inside it was for me. I applied, was accepted and I started work there exactly ten years (to the exact day) from the date I had started in Augusta.

When I arrived in West Palm Beach I knew I had found my paradise. It was very scary. There were many problems to be worked out, mainly because of my disability but God never left me and one by one things fell into place. There were lots of times when I sat and cried as I thought about friends I had left behind but I knew that this was where I belonged. West Palm Beach is beautiful and the weather is almost always warm and wonderful. There are so many things to see and do. I hope that I will be able to live the rest of my life here.

I began attending a tiny gathering of God's people called The church of Christ of the Palm Beaches and was very blessed to meet two more very precious friends, David and Dinah Caskey. They are missionaries in the Bahamas and I have had the great pleasure of helping them design and maintain their web page. The work they are doing is very exciting and by doing the web page I get to be the first to read about all of the exciting happenings and current events. There were not enough of us to keep the church going but I am thankful for the bonds that were made during that time.

And then it happend. I met the most beautiful and wonderful girl from the small Caribbean island of St. Vincent and we fell in love. Click on her picture to read the full story of how she became my caregiver and then we fell in love and eventually got married. Aside from meeting Jesus, this is the best thing that has ever happened to me in my lifetime. Sonia is not only beautiful on the outside, she is a very beautiful person inside and a wonderful chef as well. Besides all that she also has a beautiful singing voice and as I found out later in life she is also a wonderful mother and wife.

A few paragraphs ago I was about 10 years younger. If you look back, you will see where I wrote that I did not believe I would ever leave West Palm Beach, Florida. I guess as we go, we get wiser and our ideas of what is important sometimes change drastically. Also, as the commercial says "Having a baby changes everything".

Having spent a decade in Palm Beach County I have enjoyed the freedom of being able to travel around the north end of the County with ease, have seen all the beaches, braved all of the hurricanes, and had my fill of prestige and fun. About three years ago I also got married to a wonderful, loving Caribbean woman named Sonia. If you have followed all of the links on this page then you will also know that we have a two-year old daughter and in October will have another.

Having a family and feeling the great responsibility that goes along with it has driven me to realize how much I need God in my life continuously and how much closer to him I want to be. I look around the world today and most of what I see is not the way I want my children to grow up. I want my children to have a strong Christian background, a functional family, all of the love I can give them, and a sense of integrity and responsibility in the midst of a world that is going in the total opposite direction.

One long sleepless night (rare for me, I usually sleep like a log) I was deep in prayer all night long and I very strongly felt that He was telling me that we were to move back to Georgia. Not to Augusta where I grew up, but rather to Dublin, Georgia. I had been through the town before, but didn't know anything else about it. When I woke up, I asked Sonia how she felt about us all moving to Georgia. I explained how I felt God's call. She was a little worried at first but the more she thought about it as the days when by, the more she warmed up to the idea. We prayed about it and agreed that if God was calling we must go. Since that time as we have been making preparations, we have not ceased to see one sign after another that we're doing the right thing. Not that I am asking for signs, I do not believe in asking God for signs. He told us to go so we're going, however it is nice to see the confirmations.

July 2005 - We have found the place in East Dublin where we eventually want to build our house and live. It is a beautiful tract of land in a nice community and will make a wonderful place for the kids to play and have a good time. (It's almost 9 acres) We found it on the internet and after doing much research and having my friend Tom go down from Augusta and take lots of pictures we contacted a real estate attorney and a realtor and made all the arrangements. Finally, we flew to Atlanta, rented a van and went with my sister down to see it, make the final inspection and buy it. It was a wonderful trip. We met lots of nice people in the town and had a great time. It's the kind of town where you can just roll into town and feel right at home. There is still much work to do but at least now we have made some permanent steps in a forward direction. It is exciting to be moving forward toward our goal.

The Bible says "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28 King James Version) and my life has been full of great examples of this. Many things have happened to me that don't seem very good, but the longer I live, the more of them that I see working together for my best. As an example, several things over the years have happened to cause me to have less independence as time goes by. As it turns out, the easiest way for the West Palm Beach VA Medical Center to accommodate my needs was to allow me to perform my duties working full-time from home. With today's modern technology, there is nothing I could do at the Medical Center that I cannot do from home. It seems like a bad thing that I have lost much of my independence, but now that I work full-time from home it doesn't make any difference whether my home is in West Palm Beach FL or Dublin GA. I can do my job just as well from either. See how God turned something bad around to make something good possible...

Send me e-mail.
I would love to hear from you!

This page last updated September 23, 2007