A grieving Alabama father has been plunged into fresh turmoil after revealing that his son was killed while walking home – five years after he lost another son to an accidental drug overdose.
Author and architect Jim Hartsell, 59, shared the tragic news about his son Jake, 33, in a post on X yesterday afternoon, saying his family was ‘devastated’ by the sudden loss.
‘My sweet son Jake, who many of you met or know from my writing, was killed in an accident while walking home last night,’ Hartsell wrote.
‘So many people loved him and his pure joy for life, I wanted to let everyone know. Our family is devastated. He was my best friend.’
The tragedy comes just five years after Hartsell and his wife Jaymaine, 58, endured the death of their younger son Jordan, a promising golfer who died suddenly on May 17, 2021, aged just 21.
Jordan had been a member of Hartselle High School’s 2015 state championship team who played six years on the school’s varsity team, won individual tournaments and went on to receive a golf scholarship to Calhoun Community College, while also attracting offers from Division I schools.
Known for his deep love of family, he was a devoted son and brother who cherished their trips to Gulf Shores, cheering on Alabama sports, and spending time with his dog, Champ.
With Jake’s passing, the author now has one surviving child, 35-year-old Jonathan.
Jordan’s death was described by his father as an accidental drug overdose. He was found by Hartsell dead in his grandfather’s home. The cause, doctors said at the time, was an interaction between his prescribed Adderall and either an opioid pill or Xanax, possibly laced with fentanyl.
His loss became the subject of Hartsell’s deeply personal book When Revelation Comes: A Journey Across the Sacred Links of Scotland, in which he chronicled the crushing grief and guilt that consumed him following the death of his son.
After his death, Hartsell travelled to Scotland, a place that had long held profound meaning for him, searching for some way to make sense of an unbearable loss.
‘I needed to see if that type of joy was still possible,’ Hartsell wrote in an excerpt published by First Call Golf. ‘I had come home to search for answers. I had come home to find a way to continue.’
But Jake had been an important part of that story long before Jordan died. In 2019, father and son traveled to Scotland together, playing lesser-known links courses and discovering places far from the traditional tourist trail.
They visited Anstruther, Cullen, Carradale and Shiskine, with Hartsell later writing about the ‘sheer joy’ on Jake’s face as they made discoveries together.
Jake also helped introduce his father to Sweetens Cove, the minimalist nine-hole course in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, which became one of Hartsell’s great passions. When Hartsell was profiled during a round there, he arrived with Jake and described how much the game had connected their family.
The book became a story not only about grief, but about fathers and sons, friendship, golf and the painstaking quest for peace.
Now, five years later, Hartsell is facing another shattering loss.
His announcement about Jake immediately prompted an outpouring of sympathy from people who knew the family and had followed Hartsell’s writing.
Many took to the thread sharing their coping mechanisms for dealing with their children’s deaths whilst others mourned alongside the bereaved father.
‘Hi, I don’t know you or Jake, but your post stopped me. Shakespeare wrote, “Grief fills the room up of my absent child.” 400 years later, I don’t think anyone has found better words. Just a stranger wanting you to know Jake’s life reached one more person’.
Another wrote, ‘I didn’t realize it was his second tragedy. How unbelievably awful’.
The circumstances of the accident have not been publicly detailed by Hartsell, beyond his description that Jake was killed while walking home.
His words, however, offered a glimpse of the extraordinary bond they shared.
Calling Jake his ‘best friend,’ Hartsell remembered him not through the circumstances of his death but through the happiness he brought to others.
The Daily Mail has reached out to Hartsell for comment.
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