Utah mayor killed in Afghanistan left a last message for his fellow Americans: Vote
Just a few days before he lost his life in Afghanistan, Brent Taylor - the father of seven children and the mayor of North Ogden, Utah - had “the precious right to vote” on his mind.
In what would be his last post on Facebook, the 39-year-old National Guardsman wrote of the elections he watched take place in Afghanistan on Oct. 20.
He posted a photo of people standing in a long line waiting to vote, and another of a woman placing a paper ballot into a ballot box - a lidded storage container strapped shut.
Taylor titled his post with this: “Freedom: Millions Defy Taliban and Vote in Afghan Elections.”
“It was beautiful to see over 4 million Afghan men and women brave threats and deadly attacks to vote in Afghanistan’s first parliamentary elections in eight years,” he wrote.
“The strong turnout, despite the attacks and challenges, was a success for the long-suffering people of Afghanistan and for the cause of human freedom.”
Knowing that America’s mid-terms were just around the corner, he added a message to his fellow Americans.
“As the USA gets ready to vote in our own election next week, I hope everyone back home exercises their precious right to vote,” he wrote.
Taylor, according to CNN, was finishing up his latest tour of duty when he died in Kabul after a member of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces opened fire in a so-called “insider” attack.
He had served 12 years as an officer in the Army National Guard, seven of which were spent on active duty, according to his biography on the North Ogden city website. He served two tours during the Iraq War as well as in Afghanistan, the bio says.
He won a seat on the city council in 2009 - three years after graduating from Brigham Young University - and won his first term as mayor in 2013, his bio says. The website lists him as “off on temporary military leave.”
Over the weekend, people lined the street leading to the town’s municipal center with American flags and placed flags in front of his home, too, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.. A GoFundMe page set up for his wife, Jennie, and their seven children has raised nearly $294,000 since Sunday.
“When I asked Jennie what she would like me to say when we came out, she said that there is heartache but no regret,” Taylor’s sister-in-law, Kristy Pack, told reporters over the weekend, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
“It would be hard to find a family that loves our country more than this family, and that has the desire to serve our country more than this family.”
Taylor was “a proud Republican,” Democratic political consultant Oscar Mata told the Tribune, and was known as a bridge-builder.
“He just had a way of helping people see the things that they have in common rather than the things they disagree with,” Mata told the newspaper. “It was a skill that was just amazing.”
He built one last bridge before he died.
Whether Republicans or Democrats prevail in the mid-terms, he wrote on Facebook, he urged everyone to “remember that we have far more as Americans that unites us than divides us.”
“United we stand, divided we fall,” he wrote. “God Bless America.”
This story was originally published November 5, 2018 at 1:23 PM.