Former U.S. Rep. Mia Love’s family and friends assembled Monday in Salt Lake City to celebrate the life and legacy of the first Black Republican woman elected to Congress following her death from brain cancer last month at age 49.
A daughter of Haitian immigrants, the former Utah senator had been treated for an aggressive brain tumor known glioblastoma and had received immunotherapy as part of a clinical trial. Weeks after her daughter reported she was no longer responding to therapy, she passed away at her home in Saratoga Springs, Utah, March 23.
From a path strewn with American flags at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Institute of Religion on the University of Utah campus, hundreds of mourners came into her ceremony. Framed family photographs and bouquets of red and white flowers adorned long tables.
Love spent just two years in Congress before losing razor-thin to Democrat Ben McAdams in the 2018 midterm elections as Democrats surged. Still, she had an impact on Utah’s political environment and eventually used her fame to become a CNN political pundit.
She was once thought of as a GOP rising star, but when President Donald Trump gained control, her influence inside the party faded. Love stayed away from Trump and criticized him in 2018 for offensive remarks against immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and several African countries.
Her husband, Jason Love, made the sad audience at Monday’s memorial chuckle with tales of his wife’s “superpowers.”
After attempting to return the several toasters the couple got as wedding presents, he found her impact; he failed as he lacked receipts. His wife then went into the shop and emerged three minutes later with cash in hand.
“I thought, ‘Wow, I have married a Jedi knight,'” he remarked chuckling.
He said that parenthood was her biggest superpower.
According to Jason Love, “She was an exceptional mother and thought the most crucial work she would do in her life was inside the walls of her own house with her kids.” “She always made it a unique place for every one of them to feel loved and to start to reach their full potential.”
Love’s pals in choir sang Ed Sheeran’s “Supermarket Flowers” as well as some of her favourite hymns. Alessa, Abigale, and Peyton, her three daughters, read an op-ed their mother wrote in the Deseret News just before she passed away in which she expressed her lasting desire for the country to grow less polarizing.
Cyndi Brito, Love’s sister, recalled childhood recollections including how Love would practice all day and night for lead parts in her school plays. Her sister stated she always excelled in all she did and made everyone around her feel significant.
Brito presented a portion of a speech her third-grade daughter delivered at a recent school assembly celebrating Love’s legacy during Black History Month.
Brito remembered her daughter, Carly, telling peers, “Mia Love played many roles and had many titles, but the most important role and the most important title that Mia Love played in my eyes was auntie.”
Though she downplayed her race during her campaigning, Love recognized the importance of her candidacy following her 2014 triumph. She claimed her victory refuted critics who claimed a Black, Republican, Mormon woman could not obtain a congressional seat in mostly white Utah.
State officials and citizens went to the Utah Capitol on Sunday night to pay their respects at Love’s flag-covered casket behind ropes in the rotunda of the building.
Born Ludmya Bourdeau, Love was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2022 and said her doctors believed she had just 10 to 15 months to live, which she exceeded. Love survived for over three years following her diagnosis because to rigorous therapies.
When Love was diagnosed, her close friend, Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, said on Monday that she had requested her family and friends to rally around her like a campaign team.
“‘I’m in fight mode,’ she told us, ‘and what I need from you all, more than anything, is to help me fight it. Henderson said, “This is a campaign and we are going to win;”
Winning a municipal council position in Saratoga Springs, 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Salt Lake municipal, Love joined politics in 2003. Elected mayor of the city in 2009, she became the first Black woman to hold mayoral office in Utah.
After delivering an inspiring address at the Republican National Convention in 2012, she came close to losing a campaign for the U.S. House against the Democratic incumbent. Two years later, she ran again and triumphed.