Filmmaker examines turbulent past in 'Uintah United'

Of the 400 letters built on hillsides across America, very few have a story like that of the U in Uintah reuniting a community once torn by tragedy.

The story of the historic U and the townspeople who built it nearly a century ago is being told in a new 90-minute documentary film, "Uintah United," which debuts Saturday in Ogden. A Weber State University geography student created the film after hearing the story of the town's history over lunch with a friend.

Since then, Issac Goeckeritz has scoured journals and personal histories of people who lived when the infamous U was constructed in 1923, and he has learned that the small northern Utah town has ties to a much greater story involving a very shady and tumultuous past.

In 1922, the old farming town housed a "gang of unruly boys that ran the streets and didn't want to be in school," Goeckeritz said. The boys were responsible for running out eight principals prior to threatening then-principal Marlow J. Christensen, who began to carry a gun to protect himself and his family.

Following a scuffle with some of the boys, Christensen shot and killed one of them — 18-year-old Lloyd Bybee — an act that more than disrupted the small Weber County community.

Through Census records, Goeckeritz was able to find a living descendant of Christensen, and upon calling her, he learned she was only recently able to forgive her father for what he had done decades earlier.

"It was quite a phone call," he said. "I think the making of the film has been a very healing thing for their family. They say he never forgave himself."

The months and years that followed contained much discussion and "it all created a great split in the town, until Marlow ended up in California, never to come back to Uintah," the student filmmaker said. The story goes that Christensen's successor, 26-year-old Golden Kilburn, transformed the town, bringing it together and giving the boys something to work for.

Kilburn was somehow able to reach out to the broken town and relate to Bybee's friends and family, bringing structure back to the community. In one of Kilburn's journals, he wrote, "There's no bad boys, we just have to help them extend their tremendous energy in the right direction."

He united residents to build the U, signifying them coming together. While most letters represent the town or a university namesake, the U stood for "united" for the townspeople of Uintah.

The film, which is narrated by former KSL news anchor Dick Nourse and contains historical photographs as well as re-enactments of various events, became personal to Goeckeritz, 26, because he said it contains a "positive message about forgiveness and getting over tragedies."