HILDALE, Utah— A survivor so young he stepped on a stool to reach a podium microphone, remembered his heart “whacking like a sledgehammer” in the moments before a flash flood swept him and his family away nearly two weeks ago.
Joseph Jessop Jr. spoke Saturday during a rare public memorial service hosted by two often-secretive polygamous towns on the Utah-Arizona border that typically shun outsiders and loathe government interference.
Funerals have previously been handled discreetly, with no invitations extended to outsiders, including family of the deceased, if they aren’t members of this sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Nine of 12 bodies recovered have already been buried in a town cemetery with modest markers.
But Saturday’s memorial was open to anyone and held in the same lush park surrounded by rich red rock canyon walls where sisters Josephine Jessop, Naomi Jessop and Della Black are thought to have been on Sept. 14 with their 13 children before driving down the canyon during a flash-flood alert.
A display affixed to a backstop at the park’s baseball field told their story, with a writerly touch and images captured on cellphones of the women moments before, describing the red-brown water, “tumbling its load and writhing like a massive serpent.”
The neighboring towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, hosted the afternoon memorial service at the top of a canyon road in Maxwell Park where a few hundred people gathered, including Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, representatives from the state’s attorney general office and officials from both Washington and Mohave counties.
“Today, the people of Utah mourn with you,” Herbert said, citing passages from the Book of Mormon, adding that circumstances like these can draw people out, allowing them to help when they may have otherwise hesitated to do so.
