One familiar scene dissolved into the next on the church’s large projection screens – moments seemingly pulled from the universal scrapbook of family life.
Toddlers in the bathtub. With Mom at the beach. Ice skating with Dad. In party hats. Camping.
The pictures moved many of the hundreds who packed Colorado Community Church on Wednesday to smiles in memory of Rebecca Jean Bingham, 39, 4-year-old Macie and 2-year-old Garrison.
The images also brought tears for Frank Bingham, the only survivor of the hit-and-run accident last week that claimed his wife and kids.
“Frank, God has chosen to shepherd your family by the quiet waters of his presence, but he has chosen to shepherd you in the valley of the shadow of death,” said Hugo Venegas, the church’s senior pastor, invoking images of Psalm 23. “You are walking in (such) a great moment of loss that none of us could ever say anything that would comfort you or make any sense of this tragedy. But God wants you to know you’re not alone.”
Venegas, who married Frank and Becca on a Hawaiian beach six years ago Saturday, described the sense of loneliness and loss he would endure but also reminded him that “God will surprise you. Life will come for you. Love will come for you.”
White caskets, Becca’s in the middle flanked by her two children’s, were adorned with flowers in a church filled nearly to capacity to honor the three struck in a downtown Denver crosswalk after an evening outing for pastry and hot chocolate.
Jade Santoro, Frank’s sister, fondly recalled Becca as “forthright, down to earth, quick with a compliment you knew was sincere.” Macie was the “chubby- cheeked baby who laughed out loud easily.” And Garrison Foster Franklin Bingham “had quite a name and did a very good job living up to it.”
Venegas recounted the love story that brought the couple together. Becca had moved back to her native Arkansas when the relationship stalled. On the spur of the moment, Frank traveled there and proposed.
“He took a risk once he knew what a gift, what a jewel, what elegant grace he had in Becca,” Venegas said. “He found her and presented her with a ring. And she wisely said yes – after thinking about it for 24 hours.”
Venegas, at one point speaking on behalf of Frank Bingham, asked those rightfully angered at the men charged in the accident – Lawrence Trujillo and Eric Phil Snell – to move toward forgiveness.
“Mr. Trujillo and his friend have been the enemies of life,” Venegas said. “Their poor choices before, during and after the accident were beyond description. It’s OK for you to deal with your feelings of anger in your own way and your own time until you come to a place of resolution and a place of forgiveness.”
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper spoke briefly, at times struggling with the words to describe the loss felt by his friend Frank Bingham, an educator who helped him get up to speed on school issues before his run for office.
Hickenlooper said that once, after a family member had passed away, his aunt explained to him that “if you could recognize (death) as a gift, it could help you go forward.
“Right now I don’t feel sufficient to be speaking here,” the mayor said, “because I don’t have that way of connecting Becca and Macie and Garrison’s death to being a gift. Certainly there’s no one in the entire metropolitan area who doesn’t appreciate how precious their life is now in a way that they didn’t last week.”
Michael Bennet, superintendent of Denver Public Schools, talked of young lives ended too soon, and how those left behind inherit a responsibility.
“It’s up to us to understand the assuredness of our own mortality and live our lives a little bigger and a little better for those who’ll never have that chance,” Bennet said.
After the service, a short procession took the caskets to nearby Chapel Hill Cemetery, where Dean Hill, pastor of Cherry Creek Community Church, which the Binghams attended, offered a graveside prayer.
Frank Bingham knelt at each casket, placing a red rose on his wife’s as he touched it with his left hand, then placing white roses on Macie’s and Garrison’s.
Staff writer Kevin Simpson can be reached at 303-954-1739 or ksimpson@denverpost.com.
Staff writers Claire Martin and Christopher N. Osher contributed to this report.
