A great loss

Jim Hudson Taylor, III, died on March 20.

I knew his health was poor in recent days, but I had no idea how hard I'd cry when I read the news of his passing.

He's the great grandson of Hudson Taylor, and he's seen my play Beyond the Chariots all three times that I've performed it in Hong Kong, and he spoke after it twice. He was in the internment camp with Eric Liddell, which is the setting for the last third of the play. The first time he saw it--before we'd been introduced--he said, "It was softball. We didn't have enough room to play baseball." He and his wonderful wife, Leone, sat with us for two hours talking about how to make the play more accurate and get it into China during the Olympics.

In fact he opened up doors for all of our performances in China in '07 (RichSwingle.blogspot.com archives for January '07), during the Beijing Olympics (RichDrama.com/NewsBlog archives for August '08), and he urged Good News Communications International to hire me to write our documentary on Eric Liddell (RichDrama.com/OlympicHeroinChina).

Here are posts from this blog that tell how he has impacted my life:

Laughter from the 27th Floor
Great Grandson of Hudson Taylor
Jim Hudson Taylor Follow-up
Happy Birthday, Uncle Eric
A Profound Evening

Jim served for 11 years as general director of OMF, which was founded by Jim's great grandfather in 1865 as China Inland Mssion. OMF published a more complete obituary.