Widow Of Utah Mayor Killed In Afghanistan: ‘Our Hearts Are Broken, But Our Hearts Are Full’

(CNN) — The widow of a Utah mayor who was killed while serving in Afghanistan remembered her late husband on Wednesday, saying that while her family’s “hearts are broken,” they are “full.”

“When I talk to our children, not just now, but into the future, it will always be with a sense of pride,” Jennie Taylor said in an interview with Alisyn Camerota on CNN’s “New Day.” “To be able to be a soldier’s son or a soldier’s daughter, a soldier’s wife, a soldier’s mother is an honor. There are not a lot of people willing to pick up a soldier’s uniform, and especially to go into combat. Brent wasn’t forced, he wasn’t obligated to even join the army in the first place. He was driven.”

Maj. Brent Taylor was killed earlier this month in Kabul, Afghanistan, in small arms fire while serving in the Army National Guard.

Taylor became mayor of North Ogden, Utah, in 2013, a city about 45 miles north of Salt Lake City. Taylor temporarily stepped down as mayor to deploy to Afghanistan with the Utah Army National Guard, according to his biography on North Ogden’s website.

His body was brought back to American soil on the day of the midterm elections, which his widow, Jennie, called “powerfully fitting.”

“He felt so passionately about democracy, about the engagement of the regular citizens, about our need to exercise our right to vote, exercise our right to have an opinion, to choose good leaders, to get out and do our part,” Taylor said.

She continued: “It just seems so powerfully fitting that he would come home to American soil on that very day when elections were, when ballots were being cast on our soil shortly after he gave his life fighting for the right for other people in other nations to be able to cast their ballots on their soil.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2018 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.