Our beloved Branch President, Monte Morgan, passed awy on June 8, 2011. He served as the Branch President for eight years in Mescalero. His funeral was very good and many of the speakers spoke about his devotion to the church and all he wanted was for the less active members to return. They mentioned his love for the Book of Mormon. We loved him very much and will really miss him.
However, with his death a lot of sadness happened on the reseration. Monte was sealed in the temple to his first wife. He had two daughters. He re-married to another woman, by the name of Viola MOrgan who has been his wife for 27 years. She had a lot of children by her other two marriages, but he loved and helped raise them. These two sides of the family fought for over a week. The first two daughters thought he should be burried by his first wife and Viola wanted him to be buried in her gravesite in White tail. I have never seen such nonsense!!!! They had all kinds of meetings to discuss this and when Viola finally came to the last one, she got so mad she said she was going to have Monte cremated. That threw everyone (including aunts, cousins and other family members) into a tizzy. Push came to shove and it was ugly. After they all gave in and realized she was the one that had all the control, they finally let her have her way and they buried him in Whitetail. We drove for miles up windy canyon roads with rocks flying everywhere. Our car was so dusty that you could hardly tell it was a grey color. We passed many roads that leads to cowcamp, which the wrangers use to drive their cattle on the montain. Finally we found President Morgan's dear "whitetail" nestled in the mountains secluded from everything and everyone. They own about 10 acres out there and beautiful trees are all over. When they finished burying President Morgan's casket into the ground a group of wild horses came running down the canyon. They stopped when they saw all the people and waited for us to leave. It was beautiful. Many flowers and gifts were put on his grave and a bakset of fruit and water to remind them of the fruitful life he had.
Good bye, President Morgan, now your family can rest and hopefully try to get along with each other. Sister Morgan had a large pot luck dinner afterwards, but only half of the people came. The other side went back to Mescalero to have their own dinner. Only time will take care of all this. The words keep coming into my mind "love One another". They certainly need the gospel in their lives.
