Photo: Hannah Kendall (left) died while trying to rescue her best friend Jade Garza (right) from being electrocuted. Perhaps the most emotional moment at this morning’s funeral for Hannah Kendall, who was electrocuted along with her best friend as the teens worked in a cornfield in northwestern Illinois Monday, came at the beginning, during a live rendition of the song “If I Die Young.”
Pastor Mark Oehlert echoed the song’s lyrics in front of more than 200 people who filled a Lutheran church in Sterling, Ill., to mourn Hannah, the 14-year-old who was killed while trying to save her best friend, Jade Garza.
Jade was eulogized later today at a funeral in nearby Rock Falls, where the service also drew a large crowd and opened with a recorded version of the same song.
“We’re gathered to send (Hannah) away with a love song,” Oehlert said as family members and friends wept for Hannah, who was described as a charismatic, fun girl who loved magic tricks, movies, animals – she had a pet rat – and was nicknamed “Hannah Banana.”
Oehlert, who announced that Hannah’s organs had been donated, described how she “saw her best friend in need and gave her life to help her.” The pastor also spoke of condolences coming in from around the country via Facebook, of which Hannah was an avid user.
In front of Hannah’s casket, draped in white, her older sister, Sara Kendall, spoke briefly, calling Hannah “my sissy, my best friend, my world.”
Jade was struck with an electrical shock, apparently from a field irrigation system, while the girls and others were detasseling corn. Hannah went to the aid of her friend and too suffered a fatal shock.
“She saw her best friend in need and gave her life to help her,” the pastor said.
At Jade’s funeral this afternoon, her former Sunday school teacher spoke of her love knitting, music and playing guitar. He described Jade, nicknamed “Jaderbug,” as a focused girl, and said Jade and Hannah were compassionate, the type of kids who would invite someone eating alone at school to join them.
At the service for Hannah, Oehlert referred to detasseling as a late-summer “rite of passage” for many youths in the rural community, saying the labor-intensive job often served as a reminder of why they should study hard in school.
In response to the accident, agricultural giant Monsanto, which leases the cornfield where the girls were working, has issued new safety guidelines, requiring such irrigation systems to be “de-energized” before detasseling work proceeds.
