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Family Fulfills Last Wish of Army Nurse

When two medical flight helicopters collided near a Flagstaff, Ariz., hospital June 29, a promise died.

It was a sacred promise from a Red Sox-loving father to his three young sons. On his 37th birthday in August, they would make the 2,100-mile pilgrimage to see the Red Sox play in Fenway Park.

By all accounts, James W. Taylor Jr. was no ordinary dad. He was a hero.

He loved to save lives. He was an emergency room nurse who served as a first lieutenant in the US Army Reserves. He had treated medical burn victims from Desert Storm while stationed in Germany. Once a month he commuted from his Eagle Mountain, Utah, home to serve as a Life Flight nurse 500 miles away in Page, Ariz.

Baseball was his passion and he loved to play ball with his kids.

As a child he was drafted by a Little League team named the Red Sox and became inquisitive about the big leaguers. He fell in love with the 1984 Red Sox of Boggs, Rice, and Clemens. He decorated the house for Red Sox playoff games. He once even painted a Boston “B” on a mare he owned. When he finally went to Fenway Park in 2002 on a stop with the Army Reserves, a fan gave him a seat behind the Red Sox dugout.

“He came back saying the Red Sox fans were the greatest in the world,” said his sister, Laurie Brady.

With his intense work schedule, Taylor would tape Red Sox games. Then on Saturdays, his boys – Mason, 10, Weston, 9, and even Jackson, 4, who is autistic – would watch the team together.

When Mason was drafted by a team called the Yankees, it bugged Taylor so much that he decided to coach a team called the Red Sox. But that was to be next year, and next year never came.

Taylor and six other people were aboard the Life Flight chopper that was transporting a man injured in the Grand Canyon. They were near Flagstaff Medical Center when the crash occurred. Only Taylor survived, but he was in critical condition. Most of his bones were broken and he was unrecognizable, according to Brady.

For five days, Taylor’s sons were not allowed into the Intensive Care Unit to see their father because of the extent of his injuries.

But when things took a turn for the worse on the Fourth of July, the sons were ushered in to say goodbye to their father.

“My dad was in there, [too],” said Brady. “Mason stayed in there with his dad for a while, holding his hand. He couldn’t let go. He was in there watching highlights of Red Sox games, believe it or not. Mason just looked up at him with tears in his eyes and said, ‘Now I will never be able to get to see a real Red Sox game with my dad.”

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