Hundreds gather to remember Dylan Rounds during memorial service
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UCON — As the sun beamed down over a field in Ucon Saturday afternoon, Dylan Rounds was remembered as an “old soul” who loved to farm, tell stories and spend time outdoors.
Hundreds gathered to remember the 19-year-old whose body was found in April buried in a remote part of northern Utah near the Nevada state line. The young man from Rigby moved to the area to farm and Dylan’s first tractor was fittingly on display during the memorial service. So was his first pickup truck, an old green Ford.
“When he was 14 years old, he got the pickup from a neighbor’s estate sale. He was ecstatic that he could buy an old pickup. He had the money in his bank account and we went and paid cash for it. He was so proud of that pickup,” Dylan’s dad, Justin Rounds, said speaking from a podium placed on the back of a semitrailer bed.
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Rounds shared that when he and Candice Cooley, Dylan’s mother, learned she was pregnant, they were told their firstborn would be a girl. When Dylan was born, the baby “shocked the heck” out of the family because he was a boy.
“In typical Dylan fashion, he came into the world his own way,” David Hutchinson, Dylan’s great-uncle, said. “You probably bought all this pink stuff and had pink everywhere but Justin and Candice, little did you know that you probably just needed a pair of Levi’s and workboots.”
As a child, Dylan and his two siblings, Colton and Brooklyn, grew produce on their farm and sold it on the side of the road. The young boy raised cattle, bailed hay, and “could outwork most adults.” One day, after building a fence, Dylan was excited to paint it even though it was 100 degrees outside. He convinced his dad to let him paint the fence red.
“I was always proud of the way he worked. He always had fun doing work,” Rounds said. “When I sit in the shop and think about Dylan now, I have different times when I miss him at different points in his life like how I miss him as a 4-year-old rather than just an 18 or 19-year-old.”
Dylan, a “dreamer, builder and visionary,” branched out to farm on his own in 2022 in Lucin, Utah. He vanished over Memorial Day weekend and his family spent nearly two years searching for Dylan. Earlier this year, James Brenner, a 60-year-old man with a violent criminal history, admitted to killing Dylan and led law enforcement to his body. Brenner pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and is serving a prison sentence in Utah.
“We can’t choose to let this define us or our family or Dylan,” Rounds explained. “We can’t let the hard times defeat us or it will make our lives miserable and we can’t do that for Dylan. No matter what, we’ll keep moving forward and we’ll keep Dylan in our hearts.”
Other stories were shared about Dylan – the time a skunk sprayed him as a toddler, when he was 12 and shot a shotgun, how he used his old truck to haul sugarbeets – and a video tribute was played with photos of Dylan.
“A good farmer has hope in his next crop and Dylan had lots of hope and optimism in his crops and in his life,” Hutchinson said. “God found a good worker in Dylan.”
On his birthdays over the past two years, Cooley encouraged people around the world to plant sunflower seeds in honor of her son. Large sunflowers were on display during the memorial service and surrounding the coffin.
“We will see memories of Dylan wherever we are thanks to sunflowers,” Rounds said. “God’s plan is not always our plan and we’ve had to find this out the past two years. This definitely wasn’t our plan and was not Dylan’s but if we always remember that God has a bigger plan, it helps us navigate through the hard times.”
At the end of the memorial, pallbearers placed Dylan’s casket into the back of his old pickup and a tractor led the procession to the Ucon Cemetery. Following a graveside service, lunch of Dylan’s favorite foods: fried chicken, watermelon, RC Cola, chips and carrot cake.
Watch the entire memorial service in the video player below.