Samuel Owen

1989 - 2024

Samuel Owen

1989-2024

Salt Lake City, UT-Samuel Bean Owen was an adoring father whose brilliant analyst's mind and diplomat's dexterity made him the rare person just about everyone in City Hall could love. He died under the weight of an emotional suffering beyond all of his efforts, and those of his loved ones, to turn back. He was 34 years old.

After his son was born, in 2017, the life Sam built was in every way for Adlai. When Sam and Adlai's mom, Naomi, separated, the boy shared time between them. In Salt Lake City, where he went to school, the house he lived in was more Adlai's than Sam's-its walls papered in Adlai's precocious art, its floors an epic hazard of Legos. Sam saw it as his first job to make way for Adlai's ceaseless imagination. Even as it rolled from one realm to the next-Batman to Spider-Man, still photography to homemade movies-the world they crafted never ran out of room.

Sam would ferry Adlai several hours south for time with his mom, often camping nearby with his dogs to save a few dollars. Back in Salt Lake, on schooldays, he'd pick up a son who smiled from ear to ear at the sight of his father, and couldn't wait to be home. The weekend before they died, Sam took Adlai on a closing-day ski outing with Sam's mother and sister. They said they'd never felt closer to Sam.

From the time he was small, Sam's love for wild places led him to wander with his family and friends: hiking the Needles, deep in Canyonlands National Park, and biking the White Rim Road; canoeing at Shoshone Lake in backcountry Yellowstone; backpacking in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument; camping outside Capitol Reef's dinosaur-age Waterpocket Fold, where he and his mom had locked in plans to take Adlai this very weekend.

He was legend on four different 50-milers in Boy Scouts, where, after depositing his backpack at the destination, he would hike back down over and over to carry the packs of friends. He did this twice in the High Uintas, including at King's Peak, and at the Windrivers' Cirque of the Towers. For the final scout adventure, in Dark Canyon Wilderness, his scoutmaster asked Sam to be the one to hike back out with him the grueling 17 miles to bring in a rescue chopper for a badly injured boy.

Sam started on the staff of the Salt Lake City Council as an intern, in 2017, and quickly unveiled a savant's mastery of civic esoterica-water rights and inland ports. Within months he was assigned primary staff responsibility for public utility policy. He climbed to the level of policy analysis, but, as for most of us, his job description didn't quite capture it. Sam's quiet, respectful and collaborative nature was appreciated by both branches of government. When the council office might otherwise reach an impasse with the mayor's staff on one issue or another, Sam would, more often than not, see the start of a positive way through.

He got his education at the University of Utah, first with a bachelor's degree in anthropology and then in a master's program in public administration, which he pursued under an unyielding load of work and parenting. Sam had been an uneven student, but his intellect was never in question: Early in high school, he wrote an essay that his English teacher was convinced could only be plagiarized. The teacher consulted the rest of the department, and they decided the way to determine if Sam's work had been original was to set up a monitored in-class exercise. Deciding the matter, his second essay was better than the first. That was not an isolated incident: His unprepared riff on "Crime and Punishment" once set a new standard, a teacher said, for 15-minute oral presentations.

Sam's compassion and sensitivity shared roots with enormous pain. He struggled with substance use from his teenage years, paired with intense anxiety and other challenges to his mental health. Sam's friends, acquaintances, and colleagues sometimes knew about these hardships, and sometimes not. But they knew that his kindness was constant, and that what he wanted most was to be the best father he could to Adlai. He'd been sober for an extended time, and both of Sam's parents had made it their urgent daily task to ease his burdens, to find him the right help. But the darkness was deft and strong. It swept Sam away, and with him his supremely beloved Adlai.

Sam is survived by his twin sister, Hannah; his brother, Michael; his mother, Becky; and his father, Dave. They hope for peace and understanding for other suffering families, and beg for understanding from those who surround them. If you are struggling, please seek help; know that there are others around you, or others you can reach, who will never, ever give up. If you have thoughts of self-harm, call the national suicide and crisis lifeline, at 988.