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Staff photo by Gary Stelzer
Several years ago Jeff Smith pictured Monday, Nov 23, 2009 in Madison Township, Butler County, Ohio wrote a poem about Jessica Lunsford - a Florida girl who was raped and killed. Her killer died in prison and now Smith wants to get his poem to her parents.
Madison coach hopes poem brings solace to parents of slain girl
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By Rick McCrabb,
Columnist
Updated 12:02 PM Tuesday, November 24, 2009
MADISON TWP. — Jeff Smith, awake in bed, was haunted by the picture he saw hours before while reading the newspaper over breakfast.
There, under the headline “Sheriff: Man confesses to slaying girl,” was a photo of 9-year-old Jessica Marie Lunsford, of Homosassa, Fla., flashing a smile brighter than Cinderella’s castle, and wearing a pink floppy hat.
Jessica was pure innocence.
“She could have been my daughter, your daughter,” Smith told me recently while sitting in his office at Madison Jr./Sr. High School. “She could have been any of the girls in my gym class. Man, I really struggled with that.
“She was as happy as she could be, and a few brutal hours later, her life was terminated.”
He had to put his thoughts on paper. Smith, boys basketball coach at Madison High School for 13 years, loves writing poetry.
He wrote “The Girl in the Bucket Hat” in March 2005 after learning Jessica had been abducted, raped, put in a trash bag, then buried in a four-foot hole.
When law enforcement officials dug up her body three weeks after her father reported her missing, her purple stuffed dolphin was in her arms, her father said.
I handed Smith a copy of his poem:
“You’re the girl in the bucket hat,
A smile as bright as day
But today the world has darkened”
He stopped reading.
“It tears me up,” he said. “I can’t shake her out of my head.”
Four years later, Smith is thinking about Jessica again. John Couey, 51, the serial child predator who murdered Jessica, died Sept. 30 in prison.
He had been on death row for her abduction, rape, and murder. He had been imprisoned in the Florida State Prison at Starke, Fla. Prison officials would not elaborate as to specifics about Couey’s illness and death, but they did say Couey had been ill for some time.
News of his death opened up the same wounds for Smith.
“They flooded back to me,” he said of his emotions.
Smith said he’s “grateful” Couey is dead, strong words considering his religious beliefs.
“I know I shouldn’t feel this way,” he said, “but he terminated a kid. Justice was served. He didn’t deserve to live. Now he has to make it right with the Lord.”
Smith, who has written more than 100 poems, mostly about his two children and his basketball players, hopes to relay his poem to Jessica’s parents, Angela Bryant and Mark Lunsford.
Bryant, a Waynesville native, lives in Morrow and Lunsford, raised in Trotwood and Springfield, resides in Florida.
Smith hopes his poem can provide a few words of encouragement.
“Hopefully,” Smith said, “they will reach a place where they have some peace. I don’t think a parent ever truly gets over it. God will help them through it.”
Jeff Smith's Poem
'The Girl in the Bucket Hat'
You’re the girl in the bucket hat,
A smile as bright as day.
But today the world has darkened
As we’ve learned you’ve gone away.
That smile stays in my head
And now it makes me cry.
When the world learned of your fate
There was a collective-mournful sigh.
You’re the one in the bucket hat,
A sunny girl of the “Sunshine State”.
It pains me to know your last human touch,
Were the evil hands of hate.
But I see you now out yonder,
Your bucket hat is now your crown.
There’s a nail-pierced hand you’re holding,
On the golden street you are walking down.
The hands that hold you now,
Are the hands of incarnate grace,
And that city that knows not darkness,
Is somehow brightened by your face.
Evil took you from us,
In hell he’ll pay for that.
As the angels celebrate the arrival
Of the girl in the bucket hat.
For Jessica,
Jeff Smith
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