Killing of mayor brings grief to admiring town he served
NORTH OGDEN, Utah — The call had come again. Brent Taylor, the mayor of North Ogden and a major in the Utah National Guard, would be going to Afghanistan for his fourth deployment.
He told his constituents about it on Facebook in January, explaining that he had been called to serve his country “whenever and however I can” and that he would be gone for a year, as part of a team helping to train an Afghan army commando battalion. “Service is really what leadership is all about,” he told them.
He said goodbye to his wife, Jennie, and their seven children, and turned over his municipal duties to his friend Brent Chugg. “You need to keep safe,” Chugg told him. “I will,” Taylor replied.
He did not make it home. Taylor, 39, was killed Saturday in an insider attack, apparently by one of the people he was there to help.
News of Taylor’s death was soon all over Utah, relayed in expressions of remorse by politicians and civic leaders.
In a nation riven with anxiety over a heated midterm election, a mass shooting at a synagogue and high-profile bomb scares, Taylor’s death and the wounding of another service member in the same attack sent up a fresh wave of grief. It was a brutal reminder of a 17-year-old war that has carved gaping holes in communities across the country, with no end in sight.
His death hit particularly hard in Utah, where the Mormon faith binds many of its 3 million residents in a way that is rare for the modern era. On Saturday, when Chugg arrived at Jennie Taylor’s home, they embraced and she began to sob.
“We are overwhelmed with heartache, but not regret,” Jennie Taylor’s sister, Kristy Pack, said Sunday, standing outside the modest brick house. Even though Taylor died in a suspected insider attack, Pack said, “in our view there is not a whole lot of room for anger.”
Jennie Taylor now faces the task of raising the couple’s children: Megan, 13; Lincoln, 11; Alex, 9; Jacob 7; Ellie, 5; Jonathan, 2; and Caroline, 11 months.
At a news conference at the Utah National Guard headquarters outside Salt Lake City, Gov. Gary Herbert said he knew Brent Taylor personally, calling him “the personification of love of God, family and country.”
Taylor, who grew up in Arizona, enlisted in the military after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. So did his five brothers. Before his last tour, he had served twice in Iraq and once in Afghanistan.
He joined the City Council in 2009, was chosen as mayor in 2013 and was re-elected in 2017, building a reputation as a hands-on leader, someone who would be seen in the streets before dawn to direct snow plows on stormy days.
When Taylor left North Ogden in January, hundreds of residents lined the street to see him off, and police gave him an escort.