MOUNT VERNON — During the first of many funerals for the slain victims of this week’s tragedy, a Catholic priest suggested Friday that the men and women whose lives were cut short Tuesday be looked on as community martyrs.

“Their lives are not wasted,” said the Rev. Martin Bourke of Mount Vernon. “Their sacrifice will help us create a better Earth.”

Bourke spoke to a packed congregation of mourners at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church Friday afternoon at the funeral of 64-year-old Leroy Lange.

Lange of Methow was fatally shot Tuesday while traveling south on Interstate 5. He had been visiting his son in Bellingham and was driving to see his mother in Mount Vernon when he was killed. The Skagit County Coroner’s Office said he was shot in the head. His death was part of a killing rampage that left six dead and four wounded.

Photos of Lange — one of him paddling a canoe, another of him with his wife on their wedding day — were displayed at the front of the Immaculate Conception church above his remains. Years earlier, while growing up in Mount Vernon, Lange served as an altar boy in the same brick church.

“We can and should ask the question why, and what happened?” Bourke said. Then, he tried to answer the question, by saying, “The person with the gun failed to bond with his community.”

A person would not hurt a community that he loved, Bourke said.

He asked the mourners not to give in to the tendency to want vengeance.

He charged the hundreds of mourners to “turn the other cheek,” “love their neighbors” and to not “be deaf to loneliness and alienation.”

By passing on charity, love and friendship, the people of Skagit County will build and foster a greater community, he said.

Family members and friends of Lange did not speak publicly at the funeral, but several spoke privately after the service.

Lange met Tom Linder 54 years ago at the small Immaculate Conception Catholic school in Mount Vernon. The two were best friends until their lives parted ways after high school. Linder said since his childhood friendship with Lange, he has never had a better friend.

“We did everything together. We got into trouble together; we played together,” Linder said.

They were in a rocket club at Mount Vernon High School, served together as altar boys and survived the “crazy things you do as kids.”

“He was just the nicest guy, with a good sense of humor,” he said of Lange.

The boys both had an affinity for all things mechanical, building wooden go-carts and a make-shift moped, or a bike with a motor on it.

“If anything could be powered, LeRoy and Jerome (LeRoy’s older brother) could do it,” Linder said.

Lange went on to work on a missile project at Boeing. He was also a skipper and deckhand on a ferry. He also volunteered as a firefighter while living on Lummi Island in Whatcom County. He then retired in Methow with his longtime wife, Carla. People who knew him remember his big heart, his mechanical mind and his never-ending teasing and laughter.

“Death is hard enough,” said his relative Joanne Marco, “But when it’s death and violence, it’s even worse.”

• Tahlia Ganser can be reached at 360-416-2148 or at .