Farewell to a Daughter, a Sister--and a Friend : Memorial: Denise Huber, the smiling face on the missing persons’ posters, is remembered by those she touched.

In an elegant ceremony for a young woman whose tragic story many came to know through grim headlines, hundreds of people bid farewell Saturday to Denise Huber, whose murder seems yet another symbol of how brutal the times in which we live have become.

Beneath a canopy of sun-washed, denim-blue sky, some 300 friends and family, including those who came to know the Hubers only after their 23-year-old daughter vanished three years ago, gathered at Mariners Church in Newport Beach for a graceful, dignified memorial that included an abundance of tributes, testimonies and tears.

From as far away as Canada and Tennessee, Denise’s relatives and friends traveled to attend the 90-minute service, where six of them were allotted a brief moment to remember Denise’s equally brief life. One quoted C.S. Lewis’ “A Grief Observed”--in which Lewis described the pain of losing his wife to cancer--and all recalled with humor Denise’s fondness for frogs, fun and the Los Angeles Kings hockey team.

“I’m from Vancouver and I did not share Denise’s enthusiasm for the Los Angeles Kings,” said youth pastor and Vancouver Canucks fan, Dave Nieuwsma, whose remark prompted muffled laughter, one of a half-dozen such lighter moments in an otherwise somber event.

Cousin and long-time family friend with a daughter roughly Denise’s age, Nieuwsma spoke of having wonderful memories of Denise, described by all as a person of strong religious convictions. But Nieuwsma said the “one who brought those memories is gone.”

“I wish I could have been more like her,” confessed former college roommate Debbie Scott. “Life was so much fun when she was around.”

Although the events of the past eight days--ever since Denise’s bludgeoned body was identified as that found tucked inside a freezer belonging to a former Orange County man--were alluded to several times, the family pastor, the Rev. Walt Shepard, urged people to set history aside and look forward. And yet, in the next breath, he seemed unable to heed his own advice.

“You can’t help thinking . . . of some of the details that have come out in the investigation,” the reverend said.

“You’ve got to be thinking with me of the words BLUNT--FORCE--TRAUMA.

“You can’t expect me to believe that you haven’t seen an entirely new meaning to the word: bludgeoned.”

Three years after her disappearance, Denise’s frozen, handcuffed corpse was found July 13 after an Arizona woman thought it queer that house painter and former Lake Forest resident John J. Famalaro had an extension cord leading into a Ryder rental truck parked outside his country club home in Dewey, Ariz.

She tipped authorities and Famalaro, 37, was indicted last Thursday on first-degree murder charges after investigators turned up numerous suspicious items at his home, including a crowbar that appeared to be stained with blood and the clothing Denise is believed to have worn the day she vanished, also bearing crimson stains.

In part because it involved the kind of circumstances most people could both relate to and dread--she fell victim after her car broke down on the Corona del Mar Freeway at 2:30 in the morning shortly after dropping a friend off at home--the crime galvanized what is typically an aloof community.

Joined by friends and sympathetic strangers, the family plastered flyers throughout the area, posted messages on freeway billboards, passed out “Do you know where Denise is?” bumper stickers and, eventually, even hired a banner plane. With the help of others, the family raised a $10,000 reward, and television programs “America’s Most Wanted” and “Inside Edition” afforded the case national attention.

In what in retrospect seems an eerie quirk of fate, Denise’s mother, Ione, expressed frustration in an interview for a newspaper story that ran in The Times June 3--three years to the day of Denise’s kidnaping--that she could not “put an end” to the years of “not knowing” what befell her daughter.

Although the end that has come to pass in the weeks since she expressed those sentiments may be more horrific than even what she and husband, Dennis, ever imagined, Saturday’s tribute to their daughter did seem to provide them and every one else a measure of closure.

“I think this is wonderful for Denise,” said Gillian Fay, who has known the Hubers for nearly a decade. “She deserved this.”

Tammy Brown, who described Denise as her best friend, said she wanted to say a few words at the service, but when the day arrived she could not muster the composure, she said.

“It would be too much,” she admitted, her voice quivering. “I didn’t have the strength to stand up in front of everybody and talk.

“For the past three years, I have talked to her through my heart, telling her how I feel.”

In honor of her friend, she pinned a picture of her and Denise from their UC Irvine graduation, Brown’s favorite.

“I love this photo,” she said. Brown, 26, said the photo brought back memories of kinder days.

DeeAnn Holley, 37, of Irvine said she didn’t know Denise nor her family, but attended the service because she wanted to pay her respects and say a prayer.

“(The story of her disappearance) touched me as a parent,” Holley said. “I just felt the pain almost as if it was one of my own daughters. It broke my heart. I guess it is just a mother-to-mother kind of thing.”

In the pews sat old and young alike, among them pony-tailed brunettes who looked not unlike a toddling Denise as portrayed in the many photographs stationed on an easel in the church vestibule. Together, the photos formed a collage of the young woman’s life: as a youngster in her softball uniform, a grinning schoolgirl with braces and as an infant seated on the lap of her grandfather, next to whom she will be laid to rest Aug. 2 in South Dakota.

Another photograph depicted a piece of fabric on which Denise had embroidered for her parents the words, “Life is fragile; handle with care.”

On the stage of the cavernous auditorium rested 13 flower arrangements.

Pianist John Andrew Schreiner paid one of the most moving tributes--an original song, “Her Memory,” whose haunting lyrics were, in part:

“Said goodby to her friend, drove home real late.

“What happened next was a mystery.

Someone took her away--left us just her memory. . . .

“Three years of prayin’, three years of fright. But I know in my heart everything is all right.”

The songwriter, Nancy Streza, a lifelong friend, said her family was about to leave on a trip to Colorado, one they’ve taken every year since Denise’s abduction, but this year’s trip would be different.

“The first year we went, it was just a few days after Denise disappeared,” she said. “My girls and I stopped at every truck stop and rest area on the way to put up flyers, and it was the same next year.

“This year, we don’t have to put up any flyers and we don’t have to look for her along the side of the road.”

Shattering what is at least the usual perception of law enforcement officers as among the most calloused, Costa Mesa Police Chief Dave Snowden could not contain his tears as he delivered a tribute to a woman whose case he said had touched his own life deeply. Throughout the service, he sat in the front row clutching his wife’s hand and delicately fingering the tiny, gray program that bore a black-and-white portrait of a beaming Denise.

“Her picture has been my constant companion,” Snowden said. “It’s on my desk at work. It’s on the visor of my car, and it’s on our dresser at home.”

Repeating something Denise’s father had once told him, the chief added, “Parents should not live to bury their children.”

Later, Brown, the friend, sighed: “Yes, there is some sense of closure, but I know this really isn’t over yet.”

“I am glad for this opportunity (to say goodby) and also to finally have the answers--although they were not the ones we wanted,” Brown said. “At least they are answers.” Authorities still must sort out the grim task of determining whether the trial will be held in Arizona or California, and then there is the trial itself to endure.

Following the service, family and friends mingled in the lobby and courtyard, as Dennis and Ione Huber spoke briefly with reporters.

With words sincere, the family’s pastoral staff, saying they were speaking for Denise’s parents and her brother, Jeff, again and again emphasized that people should leave with hope. And yet, though well-intended, they were words that--on this particular afternoon--seemed to ring a bit hollow, even for a family of faith such as the Hubers.

If anything, it seems that the prophetic statement of Costa Mesa Police Capt. Tom Lazar, spoken just two days after Denise’s kidnaping, rang truest Saturday: “We have feelings about these things, and this one doesn’t feel good.”

* HUBER COVERAGE: A16-17