It is with tremendous anguish that I report to you the recent news of the death of Dr. Jerry Falwell, Chancellor of Liberty University, friend of the Phillips family. The news is altogether more painful for me because I just recently enjoyed a thirty-minute telephone conversation with him, reviewing our family history together and talking about plans for the future. When I spoke with him on the phone, he sounded as fresh, jovial, and enthusiastic as he did the first time my family visited him at Thomas Rhodes Baptist Church in the early 1970s. His impact on the United States of America is widely known, but his personal impact on my family and me for thirty years is a matter of tender remembrance. Dr. Falwell was one of the keynotes for our Jamestown Quadricentennial Celebration, but my first and foremost reason for visiting with him on the telephone recently was to thank him with as much specificity as possible for his thirty years of kindness to my father, my family, and me. I certainly never imagined when we spoke that that would be the last time I would hear his voice this side of heaven.

This news is overwhelming to me. I am not able at present to offer the proper tribute to the life of this remarkable man, but I purpose to soon, after I collect my thoughts and prayerfully consider the best way to do so. For now, I offer my heartfelt condolences to his family even as I rejoice in the knowledge that there is one more soul in the presence of Jesus Christ.