“And he said unto me, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee: For my strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
- 2 Corinthians 12:9
It’s a verse that Dawn Smith Jordan remembers discussing frequently with her mother, Hilda, at the Smith family home in Lexington.
And it’s a verse that took on a deeper meaning when Jordan’s 17-year-old sister, Shari Faye, was kidnapped and later found strangled about 20 miles from home in Saluda County.
“Never in a million years did I see that coming,” Jordan said, talking about the tragedy that hit her family on a hot spring day in 1985 and which led to South Carolina’s largest manhunt to that time.
Shari Faye Smith was just two days from graduating high school when she was abducted from the driveway of her family home in the Red Bank community of Lexington County.
Five days later, her killer led the family to her body after several phone calls to the family. He continued to call the family – eight times in all – during a 28-day period in which he also killed a 9-year-old Richland County girl, Debra May Helmick.
“This man called and taunted my family,” Jordan said. “He even threatened my life. And through it all, I did want to ask God why. But he always spoke to me and said, ‘My grace is sufficient, Dawn.’”
It’s a story Jordan has told as a Christian speaker, singer and musician almost three decades now. It’s one she shared with the guests at the Miss Clarendon Scholarship Luncheon held Aug. 22 at Manning United Methodist Church. Jordan was named Miss South Carolina in 1986, the year after her sister’s tragic death.
But Jordan’s story is never one that dwells on the tragedy. Rather, she speaks of hope in the midst of the storm. She sings about God’s eye being on the sparrow.
Most of all, she talks about how she forgave the man that killed her sister.
“I didn’t want to,” she said. “He wrote me a letter after his conviction. He wrote my family a letter, asking us to forgive him. I have to admit to you that I didn’t answer that letter for about two years, not until maybe 1991 or 1992, even.”
Jordan said God lay on her heart that she herself had been forgiven.
“God told me, ‘I’ve forgiven you so that you may forgive,’” Jordan said. “I learned by forgiving Larry Gene Bell that forgiveness is a choice. Do you know who I set free when I forgave him?”
“I set myself free,” Jordan said. “Forgiveness can be the thing that sets you free.”
Jordan talked about reading a book by Cory ten Boom called “The Hiding Place.”
“It is about her family’s time of hiding during the Nazi terrorization of Europe during World War II,” Jordan said. “She talked about how horrible the Nazis were, and yet she was able to forgive.”
Ironically, Jordan said she was also able to gain the strength to forgive her sister’s killer from her sister’s own letter. Bell made Shari Faye write a “Last Will and Testament” that he mailed to the family the day after her kidnapping.
The letter was intercepted at the post office by the State Law Enforcement Division, and forensic testing of the letter ultimately led to Bell’s arrest nearly a month later.
“In this letter, you see what it looks like to say, ‘I put my trust in God with all my heart,’” Jordan said.
Jordan reads the letter when she speaks to churches or civic groups. In it, her sister asks the family not to let the kidnapping and murder ruin their lives. She tells them that she loves them and that she will be with her Father now.
She tells them that “some good will come from this.”
“She is writing this while she’s with a man who has said he is going to kill her,” Jordan said. “He’s said, ‘Here’s a blank piece of paper. You can write your farewells.’”
“I don’t know how someone could be so calm in that instance,” Jordan said. “But you know what I hear in this letter? I don’t hear fear. I hear complete trust in God. I hear a faith that passes any and all understanding.”
The Junior Ambassadors of Clarendon County – who organized the scholarship luncheon to raise money for the pageant that will be held in October – were pleased with the turnout.
“We’ve had a great turnout, I think,” said Mary Margaret McCaskill. “We appreciate everyone coming out and supporting the Miss Clarendon Scholarship Pageant and Dawn. I know I get something out of her story every time I hear it.”
