Pastor Hugo Venegas, of the Colorado Community Church, told Frank Bingham this afternoon to prepare for the lonely journey through the valley of the shadow of death as Venegas led hundreds of mourners through the memorial service for Bingham’s wife and two children who were killed Friday night by a man police said was a drunk driver.
“Frank, this will be your first Thanksgiving without your family,” said Venegas, a family friend who married the couple in Hawaii exactly six years ago this Saturday. “This will be your first Christmas without your family. There will be tough days ahead, decisions to be made alone. You will be going home alone, with no voices of love. The rooms will be empty.
“It will be a lonely journey through the valley of loneliness.”
Three white caskets, one large and two small, each with flower bouquets, were lined end-to-end between the pulpit and the enormous audience, estimated by Aurora police at 1,200 people.
Mayor John Hickenlooper, a personal friend of the family, told the audience, “Oh Lord, today we are sending you three of our very best,” paraphrasing a Kansas City newspaper headline from several years ago about the passing of Joyce Hall, a civic leader.
“There’s no one in the metropolitan area who doesn’t appreciate how precious their lives are this week,” Hickenlooper said, referring to the shocking, instantaneous tragedy that took the life of Bingham’s wife, Rebecca, and his two children, Macie, 4, and Garrison, 2. The family was crossing a downtown street after visiting a Lodo bakery, walking back to the RTD light rail, which the children loved to ride. A speeding pickup truck allegedly ran a red light and crashed into the family, destroying the double stroller the children were riding in.
After the service, the three caskets were taken from the church to three hearses waiting outside; first the mother, followed by the daughter, whose casket was adorned with her favorite pink teddy bear; then the son, whose casket was draped with a Superman cape honoring the boy’s favorite fictional character.
Frank Bingham walked alone out of the church, following the three sets of pall bearers. With his injured arm supported in a blue sling, Bingham looked pale and very much alone. After the caskets were loaded into the hearses, he turned and walked to his limosine, where he was joined in the back seat by his parents, who flanked him.
More than 32 boxes of childrens’ books lay piled up outside the Colorado Community Church in Englewood as a memorial service got underway for the three members of the Bingham family killed in a hit-and-run accident Friday night in downtown Denver. The family had requested children’s books be donated in lieu of flowers.
One family brought armloads of childrens books about animals because of the childrens’ love of going to the Denver Zoo with their mother. One book was titled, “Who Goes Woof?” Another was the classic “Charlotte’s Web.”
A Denver Fire Department fire engine from Station 22 parked outside the church, the firefighters being friends of the family. Aurora paramedics also attended in support of the family.
Mourners began arriving before 1 p.m., many carrying plastic grocery bags full of children’s books, which Frank Bingham had requested in lieu of flowers to commemorate his wife and children.
A Christian acapella group to which Frank Bingham belongs, Take Heart, sang the song “The Depths of God’s Love” early in the service. As the service ended the entire assembly sang the hymn “It is Well with My Soul.”
