Father Dies--but Shows Up in Casket at Son’s Wedding

PEORIA, Ill. —  Mark Songer wanted his father to be present when he married, so he and his bride exchanged wedding vows beside his father’s open casket.

“I don’t know what made me think of it,” Songer, 34, said today. “I knew how much he loved the woman that I married, and I knew how much he loved me, and he always wanted the best for me, and . . . it seemed so natural to do.”

Songer--who said he had lived with his bride-to-be, Mary Lou Smith, for eight years--said it had been very important to his parents that he marry Smith.

But his mother died in November, and on Christmas Day his father, William Songer, also died.

So just 45 minutes before William Songer’s funeral, the Rev. Paul J. Clark conducted what he called “a completely traditional wedding” before a hushed group of 18 close friends and relatives--and before an open casket bearing the 63-year-old Songer’s body.