Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
As many as 600 people—half the population of Garfield County—packed the high school gym in Jordan on Monday for the funeral of Owen Murnion.
JORDAN—Having already opened their pocketbooks, residents of Garfield County opened their hearts Monday to the family of Owen Murnion, who was killed in a farm accident four days earlier.
Hundreds of people crowded into the gym of Garfield County High School in tiny Jordan to pay their respects to Owen, 38, and to show their support for his wife, Briana, and their seven young daughters.
They and people all over the country have been showing their support by contributing to an online fundraiser organized by friends of the Murnions. Established Thursday, on the night of Owen’s death, the GoFundMe.com campaign had topped $72,000 by Monday evening, with donations from more than 750 people. They ranched near Brussett, northwest of Jordan, and he was killed while unloading farm euipment in Jordan.
Anne Miller, a neighbor and family friend who started the fundraiser, said she has been inundated with calls and emails from across the state and nation. Volunteers are arranging to supply Briana and her daughters with meals for six months, and friends, family and acquaintances have pitched in to help with calving, which began on the Murnion place the day Owen died.
People were still offering to help on Monday, Miller said, “but they’ve got more help than they can use right now.”
The funeral began at 11 a.m. Monday, but people began filing in before 10. By 11, cars and trucks had filled all the school parking lots and snaked down the street several blocks to the VFW Hall, where a potluck was held after the service.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Photos of Owen and Briana and their seven daughters were in display in the gym.
More than 200 people were seated on the floor of the gym, decorated with 15 or 20 floral arrangements, and 300 or 400 more were squeezed into the bleachers. Still more people, probably another hundred or more, stood four and five deep behind the last row of bleacher seats. All this in a huge county with a population of about 1,200.
“The gym will be half Murnions,” Garfield County Commission Chairwoman Teddy Robertson said before the service. “Either a Murnion or a woman married to a Murnion. In this county there are only about five names.”
The service opened with a haunting rendition of “Wayfaring Stranger,” played by guitarist Skip Olson and bassist Jen Crawford, who is also the county treasurer.
The eulogy was delivered by Owen’s good friend, Jake Stroh. After collecting himself with a few slow, deep breaths, Stroh first read Owen’s obituary. He choked up reciting the long roll call of the Murnions’ daughters—Siera, Taylor, RaeLynn, Alyssa, Ashley, Hannah and Hayden.
Owen Murnion had two daughters when he met Briana Weeding, who had a daughter of her own. Together, they had two sets of twins. Their daughters range in age from 5 to 15.
Stroh praised his friend as a generous, hardworking, fun-loving perfectionist, a man who “never knew how to do anything small. He was all-in all the time.” He said Owen’s faith in Jesus Christ was deep and rock-solid.
There followed a long slide show of scenes from Owen’s life—Owen working on a truck, dancing at his wedding, building a house, standing next to a tractor axle-deep in mud, and carving pumpkins. There were dozens of photos of him with creatures he brought down or reeled in, including coyotes, antelope, deer, paddlefish, ocean fish and a couple of monster elk.
Mostly, though, there were pictures of Owen and his wife and daughters—his daughters in his arms, at his side, on his lap.
After the slide show, there was a talk by another friend, the Rev. K.J. Ellington, pastor of the Jordan Community Bible Church, where Owen was a Bible study teacher, prayer leader and treasurer.
Ellington said Owen’s death left “a Grand Canyon-size hole in this community,” but he leavened his solemn remembrance with humor, too. Speaking of Owen’s daughters, he said, “he manned up and did what most of us men in this room would not do. He lived in a house with eight women.”
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Owen Murnion’s good friend, Jake Stroh, delivered the eulogy.
Ellington said he didn’t wonder whether his friend was going to heaven. At the moment of Owen’s death, he said, “he woke up to the face of Jesus.”
“Owen’s not in heaven because he was perfect,” he said. “He’s not in heaven because he died tragically.” Nor, he continued, was Owen in heaven because he was a man of strong convictions and great honor, or a good husband, father, son and friend, though he was all those things.
He said Owen is in heaven because he gave himself up completely to Jesus, “because he put his faith in Jesus Christ and in him alone.”
After the funeral, high school vo-ag teacher Bruce Wright said that while people in Garfield County are self-reliant, “when the community comes together, great things happen.”
By the afternoon of the day Owen died, he said, “it was kind of like the land of the walking dead. It just devastated everyone. By Friday, it was ‘OK, what do we need to do to help?’”
Owen Murnion was buried in the family plot of the Pioneer Cemetery in Jordan, followed by the potluck in the VFW Hall. Mourners crowded into the hall just as they had crowded into the gym, and in the hall they found four or five tables loaded with countless bowls, plates and platters of food.
That’s always the way it is when there’s a funeral in Jordan, County Commissioner Robertson said. When her husband died last year, her out-of-state sister asked if she should bring food.
“I told her no,” she said. “I told her she needed to bring some big boxes to take the extra food home afterward.”
