Two years after tragedy, Indiana family focuses on toddler’s birthday — not her dad’s death

Published 12:30 pm Wednesday, April 6, 2016

LAPEL, Ind. — Sitting on the floor of her living room, the nearly 2-year-old little girl with dirty blonde hair is starting to learn her colors.

She holds the crayons up and — with her sometimes-hard-to-understand words — she rattles them off: blue, green, yellow, purple.

“She has a new favorite every day,” her mother said. “But today it’s apparently white.”

Like most toddlers her age, Autumn Sperry is a happy little girl who constantly explores and absorbs everything around her.

But how her life began is unlike most of her peers. Wednesday marked her second birthday, but it was also the second anniversary of her father’s death.

On April 6, 2014, Rebecca Sperry, nine months pregnant, was driving home from Edgewood Baptist Church when an SUV crashed into the rear of her car, claiming the life of her husband — and Autumn’s father — Jesse Sperry.

Behind the wheel of the SUV was James D. Foutch, an off-duty police officer who was driving under the influence of hydrocodone and Xanax. He is currently serving an eight-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to reckless homicide in the accident, with an additional three-year sentence to be served for criminal recklessness.

Seriously injured, Rebecca underwent an emergency cesarean section, bringing Autumn into the world on the same day her father died.

Rebecca’s unwavering faith in God and her love for Autumn has helped her navigate through the grief that followed that bittersweet day.

Seeing Jesse

“You can tell she’s got a little bit of Jesse because he was very easy to talk to,” Rebecca said of Autumn. “Though he wasn’t outgoing, he was easy to talk to.”

Not much ruffles Autumn’s feathers, a trait Rebecca said she gets from Jesse.

Her eyes look just like her mom’s, and as she loses her baby cheeks, Autumn is starting to resemble Rebecca even more.

“But her smile is all him,” Rebecca said.

Rebecca gets to see that flash of Jesse a lot. Autumn is a giggly and adventurous little girl.

She loves her belly button and Winnie the Pooh. She helps her mom with dishes and she’s already trying to write her name.

Autumn is learning language, and she’s created a few words of her own. She calls herself Auggie — she can’t quite say her name yet — and writing, coloring and drawing are all “dot dot” to her.

As she watches her daughter grow, Rebecca makes sure to talk to Autumn about Jesse so she has an idea of who he was.

“She’s understanding a lot more of what she’s missing at home because now when she goes to homes where there’s a dad she kind of looks at him like, ‘I don’t have that. Why don’t I have that?’ Rebecca said. “She’s getting to that point. She hears me call my dad, ‘Dad,’ she knows that’s grandpa, so she’s trying to understand that relationship too.”

Janelle Cox, Jesse’s mother, said she wants Autumn to grow up knowing how much her dad loved her.

“He gave his life for Rebecca and her, for their survival in his final moments,” she told the Anderson (Indiana) Herald Bulletin. “She will always have a daddy. He’s not here on Earth with her, but he’s in heaven.”

Rebecca sometimes struggles with the fact that Autumn doesn’t have her dad around, but hearing other widows’ stories reassures her that her daughter will have a father figure.

“It’s one of those things where it’s like, OK, their kids are fine, and I know that the Lord especially makes promises to widows and orphans and the fatherless, so he’s not going to forget us. He didn’t then, he won’t now,” she said. “This isn’t a new road. It’s traveled quite a bit.”

Moving on

Rebecca and Autumn don’t visit Jesse’s gravesite as often as they used to.

Rebecca at first struggled with leaving her husband there alone, so she’d visit at least every two weeks.

But once Foutch was sentenced last September for the death of Jesse, Rebecca said she felt free.

Foutch has filed a note of appeal for his sentence with the Indiana Supreme Court.

Rebecca said she’s thought about how Foutch and his family must be hurting, and she often prays for them.

“I wonder how he’s doing and I wonder if the Lord is working in his heart or if it’s just become hardened while he’s been in prison,” Rebecca said. “I don’t know.”

The sentencing lifted a huge weight off Rebecca’s shoulders, but she still struggled even after all of the first year “firsts” had passed.

The second anniversary of Jesse’s death and of Autumn’s birth makes the day bittersweet, said Lisa Keefe, Rebecca’s mother.

“We’ve kind of determined that we want to focus on Autumn’s birthday and make it a happy day as much as possible,” she said. “It’s not going to change the past, but we can make good memories here.”

Looking at the love Jesse had for his family, the joy Autumn brings and her faith in God has helped Rebecca through the turmoil of losing her husband.

“Yes, I lost a role as a wife, but I’m a mom,” she said. “That’s my role. That’s what God said he wants me to do right now, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

Dickey writes for the Anderson (Indiana) Herald Bulletin.