During his Keene, New Hampshire high school years, a serious accident landed Jonathan Myrick Daniels in the hospital for several weeks. While hospitalized, frequent visits from a Roman Catholic priest generated long discussions that instigated serious seeking for a deeper understanding of Christianity that remained with Jonathan for the rest of his life. Soon after his hospital stay, Jonathan's seeking led him to "stray" from his Congregational Church membership to experience other denominations. Jonathan was moved by the liturgy and especially the drama of the Catholic Mass but felt the Roman Catholic Church too rigid. Considering the Congregational Church too unstructured, Jonathan soon was knocking on the door of Keene's St. James Episcopal Church, where he found a church home and later was confirmed.

The son of a well-respected doctor who was a medical officer in the US Army, Jon matriculated at Virginia Military Institute, thinking he might pursue a military career. Despite his father's death in his junior year that deeply affected him, he continued to excel and graduated as class valedictorian but decided against a military vocation. He enrolled in graduate school at Harvard to pursue an advanced degree in English thinking he might be a teacher like his mother. Yet, a deep longing to serve God and his fellow human beings remained unfulfilled. Jonathan spent time in consultation with his bishop and soon applied to Episcopal Theological Seminary (now, Episcopal Divinity School) in 1963. All in all, a not so out of the ordinary journey for those "called" by and to the Church.

At seminary in 1963 Jonathan Myrick Daniels received his first SIM scholarship. One reference letter for him presciently stated: "Jonathan has learned compassion and love for humankind and is one who would hope, above all else, that others might live in the way of Christ." Indeed, Jonathan Myrick Daniels has exemplified "how we might live in the way of Christ." 

In March 1965, at an Evening Prayer service in Cambridge Jonathan was stirred to travel to Selma, Alabama to participate in various anti-segregation activities. Over the next two months he marched for voter registration, led protests and was a leader in Selma's Episcopal Church's removal of its century-old ban on African Americans worshiping there. After returning to Cambridge for final exams, he realized he "could not stand by in benevolent dispassion any longer without compromising everything I know and love and value." Jonathan returned in August to join the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Picketing in Haynesville, Alabama against racially segregated businesses, Jonathan, along with a racially mixed group of other marchers, was arrested and jailed. Refusing offered bail money to remain with his fellow incarcerated marchers, Jonathan and the other marchers were released after six days on August 20, 1965 and ordered to leave town.

Walking with Reverend Richard Morrisroe, a Roman Catholic priest, and two teenage African-American girls, they approached a local store to buy soft drinks. A part-time deputy confronted them, cursed 17 year old Ruby Sales and raised his 12 gauge shotgun. Instinctively Jonathan pushed Ruby, stepped in front of her and took the shotgun blast in his chest. He was instantly killed. Father Morrisroe was badly wounded. The two girls were saved.

Before being removed, Jonathan's body lay in the street for almost an hour. An all-white jury later acquitted the 55 year old part-time deputy of manslaughter. 

In 1965 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said of Jonathan's courage and valor, "Certainly there are no incidents more beautiful in the annals of Church history....few people in our time will know such fulfillment or meaning."

In 1991 the General Convention in a unanimous vote in the House of Bishops and House of Deputies, Jonathan Myrick Daniels, Martyr was entered on August 14 in the calendar of saints and martyrs.

This past weekend, August 10, 2013, 65 year old Ruby Sales, the woman Jonathan died protecting, participated in the Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage in Haynesville. 

SIM's most prominent recipient never became a priest but was an ordinary seeker who became an extraordinary leader.