7 Months After His Death, Man Gets 2 Funerals

The circumstances surrounding the death of Danny Harbin Sr. will be hard to forget: His wife left his body in their Rancho Cucamonga home for seven months before telling anyone. But at two services Friday, friends and family made sure he was remembered for his life as well as his death.

Harbin died at age 55 in late December after having battled skin cancer for more than a year. His wife, Judy, last month told San Bernardino County sheriff’s detectives that his dying wish was to remain by her side rather than be buried or cremated. She locked his body in their bedroom, sealed off the room with towels and lived in the house another three months before moving out.

An autopsy determined that Harbin died of cancer. Though family members expressed outrage at what Judy Harbin had done, detectives said she committed no crime by keeping the corpse at home.

In a Friday morning service at a Mormon chapel in Rancho Cucamonga, family and friends set aside those painful memories and focused on Harbin’s life.

His only child, Danny Jr., 30, of Azusa told of the time his father, then serving in the Navy in the Pacific, went to a bar while on leave. Unhappy with the working conditions of a young woman at the bar, he paid her manager enough money to give her the rest of the night off work, the younger Harbin said.

“I thought that was really great,” he said. “It showed to me that he had a big heart.”

The story brought a few smiles, because Mormons are not allowed to drink.

The elder Harbin stayed away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for much of his adult life. But in the eight to 10 years before he was diagnosed with melanoma in November 1999, he had become an active member again, said Charles Rich, who serves in the church’s Rancho Cucamonga stake.

Linda Rivera, Harbin’s stepdaughter by his first wife, told the 60 people at the service that he was a kind and gentle man. “He was very patient,” she said. “He was always there for me when I needed him.”

Two images stick in her mind, she said. One is of Harbin smiling as he blew out the candles at his 55th birthday, held in her home where she prepared the Mexican food that he loved. The other image is of him dressed as Santa Claus many years ago.

“I know I’ll remember him with that smile on his face--forever,” Rivera said.

After the hourlong Mormon service, a second service was conducted at Riverside National Cemetery. Harbin had served in the Navy during the Vietnam War. A color guard fired a rifle salute, a bugler played taps and Harbin’s son was presented with the American flag that covered the coffin.

Judy Harbin, who did not attend either service, appears to have disappeared, family members said.

After moving out of the house where she left her husband’s body, she sometimes returned to feed a dog she kept there. Occasionally when she was there and relatives or friends came by asking about her husband, she sent them away, telling them he was sleeping or was in Oregon receiving cancer treatments, family members and detectives said.

On July 17, while Judy Harbin was at a bar in Rancho Cucamonga, she told the bartender and patrons about her husband’s body. They notified authorities, who found the corpse partially decomposed and partly mummified.

Because the law gives a wife the right to her husband’s body, Harbin’s son was not sure that he would get to give his father a proper funeral. But last week Judy Harbin mailed him a letter turning over control of the body to him, and coroner’s officials released it.

Giving his father the goodbye he deserved, the younger Harbin said, “was the main thing.”