Life Sketch for James K. Hallen

 Jimmy was a miracle. James Kevin Hallen was born on April 15, 1962, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the “Land of Enchantment.” My parents were not expecting another child because they were already dealing with the special needs of my little sister Diana, who was born with health problems. Part of Jimmy’s mission on earth was to help Diana survive (although you couldn’t always tell because he teased her so mercilessly). Diana had to be fed by a tube in her stomach for the first two years of life, and before her reparative surgery the doctor told my mother to start letting Diana taste things; otherwise, she might refuse to eat by mouth after the operation. A letter from my mother records that Jimmy was instrumental in giving Diana an example: “the other day, she tried for the first time to taste a graham cracker on her own. She begged a piece from Cindy and put it in her mouth and licked on it. I’m sure that she got the idea from watching James eat, as she seems fascinated watching him drink his bottle.”

Jimmy was magical. He was a funny baby boy who made us laugh even before he could talk. He made friends easily. Just last year, around Memorial Day, one of his elementary school chums emailed me out-of-the-blue because he had seen Jimmy’s obituary and wanted an update. Jimmy was voted class clown in his high school yearbook. He was often mischievous and reckless. He could burn a hundred bridges in relationships and then rebuild them with one contrite apology or one good deed. 

James played football and successfully directed his energy into wrestling at Maryvale High School. In 1980, he won the Arizona State Wrestling Championship gold medal for his weight class. In a news article, Coach Rick Johnson said that Jimmy’s heart was “as great as the desert.” One time, James saved a baby girl, who was locked in a car in the parking lot near our mother’s workplace on Central Avenue. He was walking from Phoenix College to Mommy’s office to give her some money for his insurance, when he saw the baby crying in the car. He ran and got Mommy, and she ran out there with him. Jimmy popped out the window with his fist, and Mommy held the baby in the shade until the police came, 15 minutes later.

About 1989, James Hallen met a single mother named Racinda Sheridan Cox near Prescott, Arizona, and they fell in love. Soon thereafter, she moved down with her four-year old daughter Elaina to live with Jimmy in Glendale, Arizona. Jimmy wanted to marry the love-of-his-life, but Racinda was reluctant to commit again, so they had a common-law marriage. They created a healthy baby boy, who was born February 1, 1991. Jimmy told me that when he looked at his new-born son, he instantly knew that he should be called Scott, short for Prescott. 

James graduated with an Associate Degree from Phoenix College, where he delighted in classes on science and astronomy. He was obsessed with the Olympus Mons and the heart-shaped feature on the planet Mars.  He would have been delirious about the discovery of the heart formation on Pluto. He tutored me in science principles: “23 +23 = Me.” He made me rehearse the colors of the light spectrum. He enjoyed Citizens Band radio, and his handle was the Mud-Duck; he was the Mayor of Mudville for his CB community.

Jimmy’s happiest days were with Racinda, Lainy, and Scott. He would create toys for the children and take them on bike rides. He noticed that there was no crossing guard at the intersection next to their grade school, so he volunteered to do it. He was an affectionate father. He would soothe Scott’s eyebrows with his thumbs, and he would echo Scott’s child-like grammar with the phrase: “I love you taller to the whole world.” In 1998, James and Racinda broke up, and he never got over it, especially after she married one of his friends. Scott lived with his mother Racinda, who married Jeff Harris in about 2002.

For employment, James was a very well-respected dry wall and sheet rock worker in the construction business. However, like my father, Jimmy struggled with mental health and alcohol problems, and we think that drug-dealers may have gotten to him also. He wrestled against the twin afflictions of addiction and mental illness, but those “monsters” could never take down his great heart, his hunger for knowledge, or his sense of humor. “Music makes my heart glow like ET,” James once said.

For several years, Jimmy was unemployed and homeless. My mother would drive around town looking for him in his old haunts and hang-outs. When he was released from a halfway house after two years of rehab, a family friend gave Jimmy a used vehicle, a van in good condition. Jimmy picked up his paycheck and immediately headed for the desert. We did not see him for weeks or months. Finally, he appeared and parked at the Methodist church at 59th and Camelback in our old neighborhood. After his van was stolen, Jimmy slept outside in the church garden beds. Risking the disapproval of superiors, Associate Pastor James Wiltbank ministered to Jimmy during this period. Pastor Jim was the younger brother of my BYU family-home-evening friend, Milo Wiltbank. Milo’s brother James had left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and there he was in Arizona watching over my brother James.

Jimmy was missing in November 2001. I had time off for Thanksgiving break, so I drove down to Phoenix with a Brother from my mission to Bolivia, Edgar Luis Monroy. Edgar and his sister Susy had been severely burned as children when a propane stove exploded in their adobe home, and I was miraculously reunited with them at the Primary Children’s Hospital in 1982. Now, Edgar had returned to the United States for more plastic surgery, after having served a mission. Since Edgar had a vial of consecrated oil, I hoped that we could find Jimmy and give him a Priesthood blessing. For over a week, we watched and waited in vain for news of Jimmy’s location. Finally, on the last night of our stay, we got a phone call from Jimmy’s friend Lee Wilke. Jimmy had crashed at Lee’s house, and we found him, nearly unconscious, lying on a bare mattress, on the floor of a spare bedroom. Since Edgar did not know the ordinance words in English, he spoke in Spanish while I translated into English during the anointing and the sealing of the blessing. As a worried big sister, I thought Heavenly Father might tell Jimmy how to get out of trouble, how to get help, how to get sober, etc. But that didn’t happen. Instead, Heavenly Father wanted to talk to his son. He did not chide or chastise. He gave no warning nor advice. He just told Jimmy how much He loved him. He told him what a special person he was. He told him that he would be a good influence on those around him, that he would be a light for others in his associations.

In his final years, Jimmy fought the wrestling match of his life against a formidable adversary, and he won: take-down. He kept an Easter promise to my mother and checked into the mental health care system for Maricopa County. Staff members helped him get Social Security disability benefits and an apartment where we could visit him. Oh, Jimmy, we miss you. 

James had a long-standing internal debate about science vs. religion. “Questions are a beautiful, miraculous way to challenge the human mind,” he told me. He had wrestled about the existence of God, until one day he called out to heaven and got a direct answer. He identified with the book of Job, especially with Jehovah’s interrogations in chapters 38 and 39:

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:4–7)

He would read and discuss scriptures with me via cell phone. Besides the American Patriot’s Bible, Jimmy constantly referred to a verse in the Pearl of Great Price: “And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten” (Moses 1:33). He also liked the book of James, of course, for the name as much as the content. At the end of each phone call, we’d recite the Lord’s Prayer in alternating lines.

The year before his passing, Jimmy shared a memory with me from his childhood. He said that we were at Great-aunt Leone’s swimming pool in California. He was five years old, and he had drifted over to the deep end. He got scared, and he was far from the side of the pool. He was afraid that he was going to drown. He cried out for help, but no one seemed to pay attention. He called for me to help him, but he said that I had already walked away and left him in the pool alone. “I had to work so hard to make it,” he said. “I was so scared. I was so little. I was all by myself. I could have drowned.” But he did not drown. He made it.

At first, I felt guilty when Jimmy told me this story: had I been a heartless sister? What if he had drowned!? But I did not even remember the incident. The important thing is that I did not let Jimmy down in his later years when he was an adult struggling with mental illness and substance abuse. I could not enter the pool to be with him, but I was strong enough to reach out my hands to him, and we were both strong enough to reach up to the Lord in prayer together. 

In Jimmy’s last days at Banner Good Samaritan Hospital, Racinda and Lainy and Scott came to say goodbye to him, expressing mutual love and forgiveness, even though they had been estranged for years. Near the end, at the hospice facility, when his organs were failing, and his lungs were filling with fluid, I prayed that he would not drown or suffocate, and he did not drown. I told him to go to sleep, and he did, breathing softly, like baby’s breaths moving farther and farther apart. The phone rang, and it was Jimmy’s son Scott, wondering if he should come to say goodbye one more time. “You’d better say it now,” I explained and held the phone to Jimmy’s ear. When Jimmy went up, Scott was saying, “Don’t forget what I told you in the hospital.” James passed away at the Ryan Home of Hospice of the Valley in Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday, 15 August 2012. He had celebrated his 50th birthday on 15 April 2012.