Two families bonded by one Bible

It started out like most Sundays. Gerald Layson prepared for church as usual, but a simple turn of events would make it unlike any other Sunday he’d experienced. Layson lost his Bible.

“I put it on the bed of my truck—the fender of it,” he recalled. “And then I went to my other car to get something out of it and forgot I’d put it there. I drove off and headed to church.” Layson said he was about a mile or so from his destination when it dawned on him that he couldn’t remember whether he had taken the Bible off the fender. “When I got to church and couldn’t find it, I knew it had to have fallen off in the middle of the road somewhere. I went back to look for it but couldn’t find it. It was gone.”

Layson is Perry born and Perry raised, and he has a lot of memories about things that have happened in the area over the years. Several of those memories were stored in that lost Bible. As a matter of fact, the Bible itself was a special memory of its own.

“My wife gave it to me for our fifth anniversary. That was about 35 years ago,” Layson reminisced. “It had some pictures in it of us before we got married and a note that our youngest son gave me when he was a little boy. There was other stuff that couldn’t be replaced too.”

Because he’s a Perry native, Layson knows many people in the area, and several residents learned of his misfortune and joined in the search. Television news media outlets got wind of it and aired stories about his lost treasure.

“We had looked and so many other people in the community had looked,” Layson reported. “Nobody could find it.” As the days passed, and with so much publicity and still no leads, Layson wasn’t sure that he’d ever get it back.

With as much local news coverage as the search had gotten, Layson figured that if someone had the Bible and planned to return it, they would have at least reached out. But no one figured on the Bible being found by someone who rarely watched the news amidst all the negativity being broadcasted. But that was the case—and that “someone” was a woman by the name of Cheryl Jackson.

“I was just on my way to my house with my brother-in-law, Willie Williams,” Jackson said. “We were going to my house to do some moving, and as we turned on Main Street off of Courtney Hodges Boulevard, Willie said, ‘Sis-in-law, there’s something in the road.’ I looked at it and immediately said, ‘That’s a Bible.’ I stopped the car and told Willie to get out and pick it up. I told him I’d try to find out whom it belonged to and get it back to them. He laughed at me and said, ‘If anybody can find whose Bible this is, you can. You go to church enough to find anybody.’”

Jackson said she never saw a name in the Bible although she later found out that Layson’s name was printed somewhere inside. The only clue to the owner that she noticed was a church bulletin for Memorial Heights Baptist Church. She didn’t go by the church that day, but for several days within that week, she rode by the church only to find no one there.

“But I knew that surely, somebody would be there on Sunday,” Jackson stated. “So I went that next Sunday, and sure enough, the pastor and his wife were there. As soon as I got out of the car with the Bible, the pastor started smiling. I began telling him that I’d found it and wondered if it might belong to a member or someone who had visited his church. He said, ‘I know exactly whose it is. Gerald Layson.’”

It was then that Jackson found out about the news features. The pastor told her about it and his wife took her inside and played a recorded video of the television footage. In follow up stories, Jackson said TV news media misreported that it was Layson’s wife who had shown her the video, but Jackson said it was the pastor’s wife who had done so.

“When she showed it to me, I saw Mr. Layson talking and saying his wife had given him the Bible years ago,” Jackson shared. “And then he said that while he’d like to have it back, if it wasn’t returned, he just hoped that whoever found it would actually use it.” Jackson said that’s when it all became emotional for her. “The tears just went to rolling,” she said with a laugh. “The pastor’s wife started crying and I started crying. It made me feel good that I was able to find it and give it back. Somebody else might have picked it up and thrown it away, but God let me find it.”

The pastor invited Jackson to come back to eat with the congregation following their service; he encouraged her to bring her family members, if she desired. Jackson said the food wasn’t the biggest incentive for her to return; it was the pastor’s promise that if she did, she could meet Mr. Layson.

“That afternoon, I picked up Willie, and we went to the church fellowship hall where they were gathered,” said Jackson. “The pastor took me inside and introduced me to everybody. I don’t think he told Mr. Layson in advance that I’d be coming because everybody seemed surprised when the pastor made the announcement of who I was. Mr. Layson hugged me and hugged me,” she said with a laugh.

Layson confirmed his joyous reaction. “I was so happy, I gave her three or four hugs,” he said through laughter of his own. “We were both crying. I told her how much I appreciated her.”

“It was just a special moment,” Jackson mentioned. “I’m so glad I was able to get it back to him.”

Jackson believes she found the Bible very shortly after it fell off of Layson’s truck because it did not appear that any cars had run over it. And because the Bible was in a protective cover that was zipped closed, Jackson said that none of Layson’s memorabilia was lost. Jackson doesn’t believe it was happenstance that the Word of God is what connected her family to Layson’s family, and Layson seems to agree.

If there’s but one moral that he hopes people will take away from his and Jackson’s shared experience, Layson said it is this: “Ms. Jackson is a black lady, and I’m a white man. In today’s times, people need to know that there are still good people in the world, and we need to all learn to get along and love each other. We’re all God’s children.”

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