William Friend Day's Five Funerals

March 17, 1926. William Friend Day, Pastor of Saint James Episcopal Church in Bozeman, Montana, had been thinking for nearly a week about the eulogy he would deliver that afternoon. In his short time at St. James, Day had already presided over five funerals, each time offering comfort to the deceased’s family and, by extension, the community itself. He always emphasized the person’s strengths and Christian attributes, avoiding any lifetime failings that were, almost always, unbeknownst to anyone outside the immediate family. But this service would be for a man whose achievements and notoriety were both in the public domain. Nelson Story was the most dominating figure in the town’s sixty-two year history, and Day knew any effort to avoid his