Loved ones remember homicide victim

BELFAST – Brian Smith and David Langway took different paths after they graduated from Bangor High School, but Langway always stayed in touch with his schoolmate.

Last year, two weeks before Christmas, Langway popped into the kitchen of Smith’s Newburgh home bearing a box of chocolate-covered cherries and a card.

“We only saw each other once in a while,” Smith said Sunday afternoon at a memorial service for the 53-year-old Winterport man. “Yet, you could say, he was always there. He was a good man.”

Smith was one of more than 60 people who attended the service at Midcoast Christian Fellowship in Belfast for the man police say was murdered.

Langway was reported missing in August. Maine State Police investigators on Oct. 4 unearthed his body from a shallow grave in the woods behind the Glenburn home of the man charged with his murder. Investigators have not yet released the cause and manner of death.

Family members declined to be interviewed after the service.

Jimmy Lipham, 43, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to murdering Langway. Bail was denied and he remains in Penobscot County Jail in Bangor.

Family and friends said Sunday they wanted to remember Langway – a former hard drinker who found new meaning in his life after a near-fatal motorcycle accident – as he lived, not how he died.

“He was a free spirit, eccentric and a little crazy sometimes,” his daughter Genie Langway said during the service. “He was a caring, gentle person. … He touched everyone, everyone who came in contact with him.

“My father would not want any of us to be mad, but I am so angry,” she said. “He was a forgiving person, but I hope this person [who killed him] gets what he deserves.”

The Rev. Jim Begley, who wept as he conducted Sunday’s service, met Langway in 1988. The pastor of Midcoast Christian Fellowship said that this summer Langway purchased an organ for the church at an auction. He also took his shoes off before entering the sanctuary as a sign of respect.

“David found God. He did not find religion,” Begley said during the service. “He embodied that hope.”

A table at the front of the church, located on Patterson Hill Road inside a former warehouse, held an array of photos of Langway and his family. His brown felt fedora – a hat he rarely took off, even for photographs – was balanced on the picture frame. Next to his high school graduation picture rested his Bible, its spine so worn the gold lettering was barely visible.

The photo was the only physical indication of Langway’s presence. There was no coffin or urn in the church during the service.

“Dad, he was a selfless man,” Cpl. Derek Langway said. Wearing his black dress uniform trimmed in red piping, the young Marine laughed and cried as he remembered his father.

“When he first came up missing was the first time I’d gone to church to see what he had that I was missing,” Derek Langway said. “I thought he was going to come back and have some great story about how his car broke down on the way to see Genie in Virginia.”

Langway was the oldest and only boy in a family of four children. His sisters, Geneva Duncan-Frost, Sherry Langway and Cindy Orcutt, recalled a big brother full of fun and good humor.

“I’ve noticed the last four or five years that David the child was definitely shining through, and I am grateful for that,” said Orcutt. “He has been such a gift to me.”

Interment will be held at a later date at the Village Cemetery in Corinna. Contributions may be made in Langway’s memory to the Waldo County Food Bank in care of the Midcoast Christian Fellowship.