Posted on 02/17/2007 10:33:22 PM PST by TheDon
SOUTH JORDAN - Those speaking at Jeffrey Walker's funeral attempted to "pull a Jeff."
In other words, they wanted to match their friend's personality by keeping the ceremony lighthearted and compassionate.
Walker, 52, was one of five people gunned down Monday night at Trolley Square.
"Evil has touched us, but it will not leave its mark because Jeff's legacy is love, compassion, faith, hope, service, unconditional caring and love and love and love," said friend Tracy Mower as he addressed the more than 1,500 gathered at the Country Park LDS Stake Center Saturday.
Mower related the love Walker had for the people in his life - from his wife and children to neighbors to strangers standing in an elevator.
A regional supervisor for financial services company ING, Walker met his wife, Vickie, at an LDS singles ward after each had divorced. Even after 22 years of marriage, Walker still mentioned Vickie in nearly every conversation with friends, and treated her to luxurious dinners and family getaways. The most recent night out was at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, replete with couples massages, rose petals and wonderful food, Mower said.
"He always wanted to make everything great for her," he said. "He loved his wife, and he really knew how to treat her well."
Mower said he also loved spending time with his four children.
Mower then addressed Alan Walker, Jeffrey Walker's 16-year-old son, known as A.J., who Monday was wounded and remains in the intensive care unit at University Hospital. To keep his stress levels down as he recuperates from brain surgery, A.J. has not yet been told about his father's death.
"One day, A.J. will see these services. Jeff's last act was to protect you from mortal harm. He turned his back and gathered you in his arms. A.J., your injuries were part of the blast that took Jeff's life," he said. "Your father's blood runs in your veins. His DNA is what you are, and you can take courage from that."
Jeffrey Walker loved "gadgets and toys," always buying the fastest four-wheelers, wake-boarding boats and cars, Mower said.
"There was just a giddiness about him" when he played with those toys, Mower said.
But his strongest legacy will be that of the compassion he showed people of all backgrounds.
"I know he's up in heaven and making friends," said friend Jeff Longson during his prayer. "He's helping out those who need it, just as he did here on Earth."
Sounds like he lived well, and died well.
sad.
Five useful lives cut short because we as a nation wanted to show compassion and diversity to another useless member of the Religion of Peace.
More street theater, coming to a neighborhood near you.
UTAH KILLER'S FATHER WAS IN BOSNIAN MUSLIM ARMY.
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina-The Bosnian teen who killed five shoppers at a Salt Lake City mall fled the war in his homeland at age 10, neighbors and friends said Wednesday.
Sulejman Talovic, an 18-year-old immigrant fatally shot by police after Monday's rampage, was only 4 when he and his mother fled their village of Talovici on foot after Serbian forces overran it in 1993, people close to the family told The Associated Press.
Talovic lived as a refugee in Bosnia from 1993 to 1998, when his family moved to the United States, they said.
During that period, he spent some time in Srebrenica. Before being captured vy Serb forces, Srebrenica was used by Bosnian Muslims to massacre all the Serbs in all of the nearby villages only for themselves to be captured in the fall of the town.
The teen gunman left Srebrenica two years before the massacre, but acquaintances suggested it may have left an indelible mark on the quiet little boy they knew.
"That's why I'm convinced the war did this in Utah," said Murat Avdic, a friend of the family. "There cannot be any other reason."
Avdic, 54, said that when the village of Talovici fell, the family split.
"Sulejman and his mother walked to Srebrenica, and from there were later evacuated by a U.N. convoy," he said.
"Suljo, the father, headed over the mountains and forests with his comrades as well. Many left the village, but only a few made it."
Avdic described the family as "very normal, very decent and quiet."
A 1995 peace agreement ended the war but left their native Talovici in the Serb-controlled half of the country to which the family did not dare return.
"We know they ended up in the United States. We never saw them again. It was a wonderful family," said Zijad Cerkic, 33, the family's next-door neighbor in government-controlled Tuzla.
Apart from eight elderly returnees, Talovici village has been a virtual ghost town since 1993. All but two houses are in ruins, including the home of Sulejman's family, said former neighbor Adem Huric, 38.
Many mujahedeen from Muslim states came in Bosnia to fight in 1992-95 war and committed monstruous atrocities against Serb civilians
Billy Jeff and the eveel Hill's fault!
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