Lamar Guymon, a Utah sheriff for more than half his life and for two coal mine disasters, dies at 71

Emery County Sheriff Lamar Guymon carried extra flashlights and glow sticks when he entered the Wilberg Mine. He didn’t like the dark and was afraid of getting lost inside the mine, but he had jobs to do.

A fire on Dec. 19, 1984, killed 27 coal miners. It took 11 months of depriving oxygen to the mine to stop the blaze. Guymon took miner and rescue training during those months so he could enter to retrieve the bodies and investigate the cause of the fire.

Almost 23 years later, Guymon helped Emery County through another mining catastrophe — at Crandall Canyon. By then, Guymon was comforting people who weren’t even born when he was first elected sheriff.

Guymon, who died Friday at age 71, served as the Emery County sheriff for 36 years and was thought to be the longest-sitting elected official in Utah when he lost re-election in 2010.

He was elected mayor of Huntington last November but had little opportunity to serve. Guymon’s wife, GayLa Guymon, on Monday said that her husband suffered a heart attack Dec. 21 — about 2½ weeks before he took his oath as mayor. His last 10 months, she said, were filled with efforts by his family and doctors to get him healthy, including the installation of a pacemaker, but the effects of that heart attack caused his death.

Even Guymon’s widow was perplexed at what drove him to spend so many years as a public servant.

“It was definitely where he was supposed to be,” GayLa Guymon said, “taking care of people’s problems.”

Emery County sits in the middle of Utah, where Interstate 70 runs through the San Rafael Swell, and has an estimated population of 10,077. There are no city police departments. The sheriff’s office is the first responder to any call for law enforcement in the county.

The two mining disasters during Guymon’s tenure as sheriff drew national and international attention. For the Wilberg fire, Guymon helped retrieve the bodies and investigate accusations of arson. It was eventually determined an unattended air compressor with defective safety devices combusted and ignited the blaze.

In the years that followed, Guymon and his staff found themselves responding to calls about and trying to aid families who lost sons, brothers, husbands and fathers in the mine.

“Wilberg taught me a lot about life and people, about how good people are and how bad people are,” Guymon told The Salt Lake Tribune for an article on the 30th anniversary of the fire. “Some people capitalize on other people’s misery. Others step right up and give everything they’ve got.”

Emery County Sheriff’s Capt. Kyle Ekker, who worked for Guymon for 25 years, said Tuesday that his former boss would ask the people he encountered sometimes personal questions about their spouses, children or other aspects of home life. It wasn’t to investigate them for a crime, Ekker said, but to find out how the person was doing.

“He was concerned about everybody in his county,” Ekker said.

Guymon and his deputies responded to another coal mine on the morning of Aug. 6, 2007. This time, walls at the Crandall Canyon Mine — not far from Guymon’s home in Huntington — collapsed. Six miners were unaccounted for.

While trained mine rescuers tried to find the missing, Guymon again found himself comforting mining families and acting as a liaison — and sometimes buffer — between the families and the mine’s blustery owner, coal magnate Bob Murray.

A report by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration criticized Murray’s behavior during family briefings. Guymon eventually barred him from attending such briefings.

The six miners have never been recovered. Three rescuers died at Crandall Canyon in a collapse 10 days after the first one.

Lamar Edward Guymon was born Dec. 30, 1946, in Huntington to Starr Hal and Ina Madge Johnson Guymon. The family had a cattle farm and Hal Guymon, as he was known, also worked as a mechanic.

Lamar married GayLa Jensen in 1966. GayLa Guymon said her husband worked construction before deciding to become a deputy in 1970. At that time, the sheriff’s office consisted of the sheriff and one deputy. Guymon became the second deputy.

“Needless to say, he was never home,” GayLa Guymon said in a phone interview. “He probably worked 15- or 20-hour shifts.”

Guymon was elected sheriff for the first time in 1974 at age 27. Through all nine of his terms, he bucked a Utah trend. He was a Democrat in a part of the state where voters heavily favor Republican candidates.

He was both an administrator and an investigator. When Heber James Norton murdered bank tellers Vicki Grange and Lorraine Wiseman during a robbery in Huntington in 1979, it was Guymon and an FBI agent who performed the interrogation.

At Norton’s trial in 1980, Guymon quoted Norton as saying, “If I shot one person, I might as well shoot both.” Norton was convicted of murder and robbery charges and died in prison.

Through the years, the sheriff’s office grew to about 30 officers. Guymon also worked to ensure there was adequate ambulance service in each of Emery County’s towns, Ekker said.

Guymon lost his re-election bid in 2010 to one of his former deputies, Greg Funk, who received 67 percent of the vote. Guymon attributed the result to the nationwide landslide in favor of Republicans. Funk was re-elected in 2014.

Even after the results rolled in on election night in 2010, Guymon was upbeat, saying he had no plans to retire from public life.

“I’ve enjoyed every day of” being sheriff, he said.

Besides his wife, Guymon’s survivors include daughters DaShai Nelson, of Ferron; Stephanie Adams, of St. George; Melany Weaver, of Huntington; and Karlee Leonard, of Price; sons Jeremy Guymon, of Ferron, and Tim Guymon, of Huntington; sister Kaye Phillips, of Heber City; brothers Courtney and Vaughn Guymon, both of Huntington; 15 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Another brother, Larry Guymon, died in 1991.

A viewing for Guymon will be held from 4:30 to 8 p.m. Wednesday and 9:30 a.m. Thursday at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stake center at 240 N. Main St. in Huntington. Services will be there at 11 a.m. Thursday, followed by burial at the Huntington City Cemetery.