In the family hierarchy Jerry was my second cousin, once removed. In reality Jerry and his deceased wife Doris were a second set of parents for me. Since returning to live in London, I visited Jerry on a regular basis. And whenever the bakers in our house outdid themselves (which is quite often), Jerry was delighted to take the excess off our hands. Jerry had a well-developed sweet tooth.

You really cannot separate Jerry from the farm he has lived on and worked his entire life. His life was that farm. Farming for Jerry was not his work, it was his life. This is a very alien concept viewed from my generation. "Get a life away from work!" is today's mantra. Even my father would occasionally shake his head over his devotion to that land. But until the day he was hospitalized for his cancer, he continually worked to make the land richer and the wildlife more numerous.

Few things made Jerry angry. The beaver that repopulated Deer Creek and loved the ash trees that he so carefully grew along the creek to stem erosion certainly raised his ire. Raccoons who ruined his sweetcorn also raised his blood pressure. When the sweetcorn was filling out, Jerry would sit out in his backyard in the evening with his shotgun and a glass of beer and fire a couple of rounds at a high-voltage tower next to the sweetcorn patch. The operative theory was that the ringing of the tower would keep the raccoons away!

Jerry did get angry at my father once. He loved to fish in Deer Creek. He fished every Sunday when the weather was decent. One day he stashed his stringer of fish where Turkey Run enters Deer Creek. Jerry continued fishing upstream. When he returned, he found that some of our hogs had broken thru one of our fences and demolished the stringer of fish. Jerry was furious. He headed straight for his father's house and found my grandmother visiting Madge Beery. Jerry was so upset that he started calling my father every name in the book (any many that were not!) because his lax fence maintenance let the hogs get to his fish. This must have been a sight to behold. Both Madge and Marie were the such well bred ladies and Jerry's language was full of profanity. Eventually Jerry finally ran out of both words and steam. At that point my grandmother said: "Jerry, I will say something to Matt, but I don't think it will do any good." And I am sure that it did not!

Being so secure in the community and on that farm, Jerry was freer than most of us act on a whim. When some neighbor's hogs repeatedly visited his 5 acre corn field one year, he loaded the hogs onto a truck and SOLD them! And waited to hear from his neighbor. The hogs didn't belong to that neighbor! In the end I gather things were worked out.

Recently I drove Jerry to the pioneer cemetaries at the northern edge of Madison County (Jerry's farm is in the southeast part of the county). We weren't more than 4 miles north of London when Jerry kept looking around and saying "Boy, the land sure is different up here!" It was all I could do to keep from laughing. Later his daughter in law explained that the real problem was that Jerry was beyond the borders of Oak Run Township!

But in Oak Run Township, Jerry knew almost everything. His daughter in law once collected over 60 wildflowers, using a guide to identify all of them. There were only two that Jerry didn't know the name of just glancing at them.

We all are going to miss Jerry Beery a lot. I'll continue to walk Deek Creek each spring to see what has changed, as Jerry and I did the past 6 years. I might even shoot a beaver for him!