The card came in the mail to Oakdale Elementary School a few days ago, just like it did last year around this time. And just like it did the year before, the first card, soon after what happened that awful Feb. 15 afternoon in 2007.
The card had no return address. No signature inside. Anonymous. But a $100 bill was tucked inside, and not a C-note fresh and new from an ATM. This bill was creased, folded, wrinkled, used, with a corner that won't sit straight. Just like the two other times the $100 bill came. Again, just the words written, by an unknown hand, "In Memory of Jesse."
Somebody remembered. Again.
A lot of people remember Jesse Helms as the second-grader at Oakdale. A 7-year-old boy with new front teeth. The kid who loved his dirt bike and loved to read just as much. A friend to every other kid. So many remember that Jesse left the after-school program that day two years ago with his mother, for whom he had made a Valentine at school.
And they remember that just a few minutes later, in the house just around the corner and down the road a bit, Jesse lay dead from gunshots. His mother pulled the trigger, police said, then she turned the gun on herself.
Nobody forgets that. Ever.
"I know I think about it every day of my life," said Ruth Helms, Jesse's grandmother. She has a scrapbook in her home where she raised six kids and 10 grandkids. "I have nine after Jesse, but he's always in there and always will be. I have good days and bad days. He was such a sweet boy. Smart."
The family decorates a little memorial garden outside the school often, many weekends, certainly every holiday. There is a little Christmas-type tree, and flowers, done up a few days ago for Valentine's Day. Just like it is decorated at Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, the Fourth of July, Halloween -- all those holidays kids are supposed to leap into with joy.
And there is the father, Joe Helms, who has dealt with the death of Jesse's mother and Jesse for these two years, describing his days as "doing the best that can be expected."
Joe lives, even today, right across the dirt driveway from where his son died. Joe could live anywhere but chose that house not 50 yards from where he found Jesse that early evening.
"I don't know why, I guess it's to be close to him," Joe Helms said.
But the remembrance of Jesse Helms is not just of death. The memory is of the little boy who lived to root for Jimmie Johnson's NASCAR No. 48 car. A little boy who tried so hard at school and was loved and respected by his teachers and even his tiny peers who gave him, before he died, by far the most "Warm and Fuzzies" awards for being a good friend. A boy so loved by his family, and that anonymous person who sends the $100 bills.
That first year, the $100 went toward the funeral. Last year, it was books for the kids at the school to read. This year, $100 will buy more books to remember Jesse Helms, books bought in his honor and in his name.
Another guy who met Jesse Helms also remembers him forever. The guy is from Virginia, and up there at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C. He met Joe Helms and Jesse Helms and Joe's brothers and nephews. That guy heard at the race about Jesse's death, and he sent a check to the family.
"Blank," said an uncle, Harold Helms. "Signed."
The check wasn't for an amount. It was for whatever it cost to put a bronze monument in Jesse's honor at Grandview Memorial Park cemetery on Rock Hill's Cherry Road.
"I saw that guy at the race last time," Joe Helms said. "He's a good guy. He loved Jesse. He doesn't want anything in return. Doesn't want anybody to know who he is. He just did it. There's a lot of people care about Jesse still. They ask me all the time how I'm doin'. I'm doin.'"
That bronze monument shows others remember the Jesse who lived. Tuesday afternoon, the only people in the big cemetery were two workers spreading straw over what must be grass seed. Jesse's monument is the closest one to the flagpole, near the front.
The marker itself shows the day he was born in July 1999 and that he died in 2007. A bronze race car on the right side, raised up. On the left side is a bronze dirt bike.
Somebody put silk flowers on the marker, with a tiny No. 48 car on a little pole sticking up from the blooms. A motorcycle on another stick. A metal Valentine gift box, shaped like a heart, with No. 48 on it. A Carolina Panthers mascot stuffed toy, because Jesse loved those Panthers who were tough and tackled hard and ran fast and free. A single rose. A balloon that said "Happy Valentine's Day."
On one side is a Mickey Mouse stuffed doll, because Jesse loved Mickey Mouse. In Mickey Mouse's lap is a stone that has written on it with a marker: "MY Sunshine!! BFF."
BFF means Best Friends Forever, in kidspeak.
An anonymous kid who remembers Jesse alive. The friend who never forgets.
On the other side of the bronze marker is a rock shaped like a heart. On it, some kid wrote with a heart-shaped love for Jesse: "I Miss you." And the words on the front of the rock: "Don't throw away, please."
Nobody forgets death. But through $100 bills, a rock shaped like a heart and another rock in Mickey Mouse's lap, Jesse Helms stays alive a little bit in the people who knew him.
Who loved him so. And still do.
