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South Salt Lake Journal

City council send condolences to North Ogden City after mayor’s death

Nov 26, 2018 02:27PM ● By Travis Barton

In a Facebook post on Oct. 17, Brent Taylor posted a photo of his “after mountain climbing” breakfast. Taylor was recognized by the South Salt Lake City Council. (Brent Taylor Facebook)

By Travis Barton | [email protected]

The death of North Ogden Mayor Brent Taylor while on military duty in Afghanistan resonated across the state, country and world, this includes South Salt Lake. 

The South Salt Lake City Council united on Nov. 7 during its council meeting to pass a resolution expressing condolences to Taylor’s family and North Ogden City. 

“We grieve with you feeling like we have lost one of our own,” stated the resolution. “We honor Mayor Taylor as a loving husband and father, an American and Utah hero, an effective public servant who gave untiring service, and as the embodiment of the type of person and wise leader we all would strive to be. Our hearts go out to all our service men and women. May all who share in this great loss be comforted and retain in most fond remembrance, the honorable Mayor Brent Taylor.” 

Taylor was on temporary military leave from his mayoral duties serving his fourth deployment in the Utah National Guard. He is survived by his wife Jennie and their seven children. 

In a letter written to Jennie from Major Abdul Rahman Rahmani of the Afghan Army Aviation, Rahmani—who flew missions with Taylor—wrote of his respect and admiration for Major Taylor. 

“He was an inspiring man who loved you all,” Rahmani wrote. “I remember him saying, ‘Family is not something. It is everything.’” 

Speaking of the cultural differences between Afghanistan and America, Rahmani wrote families are treated differently in Afghanistan, more like “property.” But Taylor taught him to “love my wife Hamida as an equal and treat my children as treasured gifts.” 

“I am a better person for having met him,” he would later write. 

In Taylor’s final Facebook post on Oct. 28, he wrote it was “beautiful to see over four million Afghan men and women brave threats and deadly attacks to vote in Afghanistan’s first parliamentary elections in eight years.” He called it a “success for the long-suffering people of Afghanistan and for the cause of human freedom.” 

Later in the post, Taylor connected the important moment in Afghan history to America’s elections in November, urging everyone to vote. 

“I hope everyone back home exercises their precious right to vote,” he wrote. “And that whether the Republicans or the Democrats win, that we all remember that we have far more as Americans that unites us than divides us. ‘United we stand, divided we fall.’ God Bless America.”