George H. Jones is a member of Epiphany Church, Leeds, Ala.

"George, they've set the date." Hank's voice was concerned but amazingly cheerful considering the circumstances.

"Oh, dear God, Hank. I've been dreading your call."

We both knew it was coming. Henry Hayes had called me first when the Supreme Court turned down his final appeal, when the attorney general asked for an execution date, and now when it had been set.

I felt a sudden pain as angina struck me fiercely, taking my breath away.

"You OK, my brother?" Hank's voice was warm with caring and concern.

"Yeah," I assured him. "Just the old ticker acting up."

"Take care of yourself, Bro. I don't want you joining me any quicker than necessary." His voice was light, but the compassion was clear.

Hank (Henry) Hayes had been on Alabama's death row at Holman Prison for seven long years when I got to know him. Convicted of the lynching of a black man in Mobile in vengeance for the mistrial of a black man accused of killing a policeman.

Henry was a Klansman. He never denied it. Raised in a turgid and hate-filled environment with a father who was imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Henry was convicted in a high-publicity case. Primary witness was "Tiger" Knowles, who received a lenient sentence in return for his testimony. Knowles later admitted that he had committed perjury over and over and lied repeatedly. I came to believe Hank was innocent of the killing.

The jury set the penalty as life without parole, but a politically elected judge overruled the jury and sentenced him to death. We challenged him to debate the issue of state killing, but he never answered. Alabama is one of only four states to allow a judge to override a jury decision.

We talked often, both by phone and on my visits to Hank. When the governor refused to intervene in several cases of jury override, we began to lose hope. We had counted on the "law and order" governor respecting the jury system to which he had expressed such devotion.

When Henry first came to death row, he and the corrections officers were worried about the reaction to him by the black death row inmates. But his first day in "The Yard" turned his life around.

Two of the black leaders, Ed Horsley and Jesse Morrison, escorted him around the "track," one in front, the other in back. "The state's trying to kill us all," Jesse explained. "We haven't got time to hate."

Henry quickly became a leader of the men on death row. He was an officer of "Project Hope," an organization of death row inmates and their families. He had pen pals all over the world.

"The way you've changed is incredible," I told Hank that last day. His face creased in thought. "I guess it's because I got to know them. Heck, George," he assured me, "they're just folks like you and me."

There were strong grounds for his conviction to be overturned. An appeals court judge called the prosecution's actions in the case "deplorable," and charged they had "set an ambush."

After each negative appeals court ruling we'd comfort each other, telling one another that the next appeal would surely be successful. Yet there was a certain inevitability to the process.

As time passed and the appeals process grew shorter, Henry became interested in the Anglican Church. A church in England had adopted him, and he grew to love them, and they him.

After a considerable amount of reflection, Hank decided he wanted to become an Episcopalian. He hesitated because he was afraid "God would reject" him because he'd been a Klansman. I assured him God forgave anyone for anything.

At first the prison authorities refused to allow him to take confirmation lessons. But within a day of getting a strong letter from the Bishop of Alabama they relented.

But they did not make it easy on Lucia Penland, of Alabama Prison Project, or me. Such irritations being as slow to let us in or out. My involvement in the anti-death penalty movement brought sly little comments we were meant to overhear.

But one single time after visiting Hank and my other friends on the row brought a reward past all the pin pricks. As I left, a female corrections officer took my hand in both of hers. "God bless you for what you're doing," she whispered to me.

Lucia and I agreed Henry was the best student we'd ever had. He studied hard. He knew every answer and more. While both of us are life-long Episcopalians, he put us through our paces on knowledge of the church. Not out of a sense of challenging us. He simply wanted to know and understand.

When time came for confirmation, Bishop Furman Stough and the Rev. Massey Gentry made the long trip down from Birmingham. We had hoped a number of priests and Hank's family could attend. He looked on this as one of the most important days of his life. But in a typical act of vindictiveness, the prison refused.

So the confirmation on grim death row had only the four of us. Yet it was a holy time. Hank's sincerity and the emotion of the time, the place and the surroundings brought a special pathos. None of us doubted Christ's presence.

That was 18 months before Hank's time ran out. Both the Roman Catholic archbishop and Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church pled with the governor for clemency. He never had the courtesy to answer.

Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning wrote the governor, "The witness he could give on overcoming hatred and bigotry should not be lost in this world which suffers so much from hatred and intolerance."

The date was set for June 6, 1997. Two weeks before Hank's date with the electric chair, Bishop Stough and I drove down to give him Holy Communion. Several others, including the prison chaplain, Chris Summers, joined us.

The bishop gave me permission to give Hank Holy Communion. Both on the Friday before, and on the day of his execution, we shared the Lord's Supper.

The day before Hank's execution a black friend, Claude Mims, told prosecutors and the press that it was impossible for Henry to have committed the crime because the two of them had been hanging sheetrock 'til after midnight the night of the crime.

"It would be a hell of a note to execute that boy and find out the truth a couple of years later," he related to news media. Prosecutors, the attorney general's office and the governor ignored this eyewitness proof of Hank's innocence.

There simply are no words to describe that last day. Very inadequately, I later said it was at once the best, and the worst day of my life.

My cardiologist had told me not to make the long trip down there. But there was no way I could not be with Hank. I thought I'd comfort him, but he comforted me.

Hank's brother and sister, Chuck Blanton and his friend, Vicki Anamet, and Lucia and I, along with Judy Cumbee of Project Hope were there. We were of many faiths, some none, but as we and Chaplain Chris Summers shared, you could really feel Christ's warming presence.

Guards were everywhere - three at the gate of the yard. Judy had brought a small bouquet of flowers. The guards refused to let Hank have them, or even put them where he could see them.

"It's OK," he told us. "Put them on my mother's grave." She had died on "The Yard" after a visit with Hank.

Henry gave his sister the Book of Common Prayer the bishop had presented to him at confirmation. His meager possessions he'd given that morning to fellow inmates. He was ready. Hank showed absolutely no fear.

Every minute seemed like an hour, but every hour seemed to slip away in a moment as the clock moved inexorably forward. It was pure agony for all of us.

As the shadows grew long, I met with Chaplain Summers and gave him the Episcopal service for those at the point of death. He recited it to Henry in the moments after they strapped him into the chair and before the switch was pulled.

"Accept, O Lord," he prayed, "a sheep of your own fold, a sinner of your own redeeming."

Hank's brother had come down from Kentucky to be with him on the last day. His sister's eyes were red and puffy from tears she could not restrain. Early in the day, he asked me, "Could you pray with me?"

For a good 30 minutes we prayed. I don't know where the words came from - certainly not from me. I know they were inspired by God as surely as I live.

I had to leave about 5 p.m. because of my heart problems.

Those last few minutes with Henry are as clear as though it was a moment ago. "I just ask one thing," I requested of Hank. "You know my heart is bad, and it's likely I'll be passing over before all that long."

He nodded. It was no time for pretense.

"I just ask you to be there to meet me."

"You've got my promise. I'll be there," he said with a grin, giving me a great bear hug.

Those were the last words I exchanged with Henry Hayes.

At 10:30 p.m. they took the condemned inmate from his family and friends to prepare him for execution. This involved shaving the head and leg where the electrodes are connected. A mask was put over his face to ease the trauma of witnesses as he writhed in agony. As they strapped him into the chair, the warden asked him if he had any last words. He gave a smile and told his executioners, then the victim's brother and his friends in the viewing room, "I love you."

The dioceses of Alabama and the Central Gulf Coast shared the cost of Henry's funeral. Bishop Furman Stough presided.

I cried all the way on the drive back to Birmingham. As I drove, the words of former Alabama Prison Commissioner Morris Thigpen kept haunting me: "After each execution I felt as though I had left another part of my own humanity and my spiritual being in that viewing room."

It still haunts me. o

George H. Jones is a member of Epiphany Church, Leeds, Ala.