Family and friends of former U.S. Rep. Mia Love gathered on Monday in Salt Lake City to remember her life and the impact she made. Love, the first Black Republican woman elected to Congress, passed away last month at age 49 from brain cancer.
Love, who was the daughter of Haitian immigrants and a former Utah lawmaker, had been getting treatment for an aggressive brain tumor called glioblastoma. She was part of a clinical trial involving immunotherapy. She died at her home in Saratoga Springs, Utah, on March 23, just weeks after her daughter said she was no longer responding to the treatments.
Hundreds came to her service at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Institute of Religion on the University of Utah campus, walking past American flags to enter. Inside, long tables displayed framed family pictures and arrangements of red and white flowers.
Love served two terms in Congress and narrowly lost to Democrat Ben McAdams in the 2018 midterm elections, during a time when Democrats gained momentum. Even though her time in Congress was short, she became an influential figure in Utah politics and later worked as a political commentator for CNN.
She had once been seen as an up-and-coming figure in the Republican Party, but her role in the party lessened when Donald Trump became more dominant. Love kept her distance from Trump and publicly criticized him in 2018 for making offensive comments about immigrants from countries like Haiti, El Salvador, and parts of Africa.
At the memorial, her husband, Jason Love, lightened the mood with stories about her “superpowers.” One story was about trying to return several toasters they received as wedding gifts without receipts and failing. His wife went into the store and came out minutes later with a refund.
“I thought, ‘Wow, I have married a Jedi knight,’” he joked.
He said her most powerful gift was being a mother.
“She was an extraordinary mother, and she believed that the most important work she would do within her life was within the walls of her own home with her children,” Jason Love said. “She always made it a special place for each of them to feel loved and to begin to achieve their full potential.”
Utah Lt. Gov Deidre Henderson speaks at funeral servicesFriends of Love sang some of her favorite hymns and Ed Sheeran’s song “Supermarket Flowers.” Her children, Alessa, Abigale, and Peyton, read an opinion piece their mother had written for the Deseret News shortly before her death. In it, she expressed her lasting hope for the country to become less divided.
Love’s sister, Cyndi Brito, shared stories from their childhood, remembering how Mia would rehearse for school plays nonstop and always put her best into everything. She made those around her feel special, her sister said.
Brito also shared part of a speech given by her third-grade daughter, Carly, during a school assembly for Black History Month, which honored Love.
“‘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,’” Brito remembered Carly saying.
Love did not focus on her race during her political campaigns, but after winning in 2014, she acknowledged how important her election was. She said her victory proved wrong those who believed a Black, Republican, Mormon woman couldn’t win a seat in mostly white Utah.
The evening before her funeral, people visited the Utah Capitol to honor her. Her flag-draped coffin was placed behind ropes in the rotunda.
Born Ludmya Bourdeau, Love was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2022. Doctors told her she likely had 10 to 15 months to live, but she lived almost three years thanks to intensive treatment.
Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, one of Love’s close friends, told those at the service that Love had asked her loved ones to support her like a campaign team after she was diagnosed.
“‘I’m in fight mode,’ she told us, ‘and what I need from you all, more than anything, is to help me fight it. This is a campaign, and we are going to win,’” Henderson said.
Love’s political career began in 2003 when she won a seat on the Saratoga Springs city council, about 30 miles south of Salt Lake City. She later became the city’s mayor in 2009, making history as the first Black woman to hold that position in Utah.
After a powerful speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention, she ran for Congress but lost narrowly to a Democratic incumbent. She ran again in 2014 and won.