Century Mourns Former Mayor Luis Gomez; Funeral Arrangements Announced

The town of Century is mourning the loss of former mayor and councilman Luis Gomez, who died suddenly Sunday morning. Funeral arrangements have now been announced.

Gomez’s death, coming without warning, has left the small Escambia County, Florida community of a few thousand residents grieving a man who, in just under a decade of public service, worked his way from a first campaign for town council to the mayor’s office — and who neighbors remembered this week less for the offices he held than for the way he held them.

A Political Career Rooted in Community Service

Gomez first ran for a seat on the Century Town Council in 2017 and won. He was appointed interim mayor in August 2023 after then-Mayor Benjamin Boutwell stepped down, then won a special election later that year, without opposition, to finish out Boutwell’s term. Gomez ran unopposed again in 2024, winning a full four-year term that began January 1, 2025. He resigned from the mayor’s office that same month, citing health reasons.

That arc — council member, interim mayor, twice-elected mayor in the span of eight years — is unusually fast for a town of Century’s size, and it reflected a rare consensus. In small-town Florida, where local politics can be personal and contested, two consecutive elections without opposition amount to a community saying it prefers not to hold a vote at all. His resignation in January 2025, after less than a month of the new term, was attributed by Gomez to his health, and his departure after that sacrifice was among the reasons tributes this week carried such personal weight.

Longtime Century resident and former council member Sandra McMurray Jackson served alongside Gomez on the council and was still serving when he became mayor. Jackson, who was also his neighbor, said she and Gomez and his wife became close friends soon after she moved into the neighborhood.

Their friendship became the origin story of Gomez’s political career itself. Jackson, watching the town’s needs and knowing her neighbor’s habits of service, decided Gomez should run.

“I remember God had led me to ask Gomez to run for council,” Jackson said. “The first time I asked him, he missed the deadline. But the next time that positions became available, he ran and he won.”

The missed filing deadline became a small local legend in its own right — a reminder that Gomez entered public life not as an ambitious politician but as a reluctant one, recruited by a friend who saw what the town needed in him. When the next seat opened, he made sure he was not late again.

‘He Loved Century’

Jackson said she thanks God for having known Gomez, describing him as deeply passionate about the small town of Century, even though he wasn’t born and raised there.

“For him not to have been born and raised here in Century, Gomez loved Century,” Jackson said. “He loved the citizens here in Century. He only wanted to do what was best for the residents. He looked out for them as much as he possibly could.”

In a town where family lineage often defines civic standing, Gomez earned his place the harder way — as a transplant who chose Century and committed to it. That distinction was one Jackson returned to more than once: his devotion was not inherited, it was given.

Jackson said she used to thank Gomez’s wife for “loaning” him to the town, since his duties as mayor often meant he had to be available for Century even when the couple had other plans of their own.

Mayors of small towns know the job as a lifestyle rather than a position. There is no City Hall apparatus to absorb the demands — the water main breaks at night, the resident who calls the mayor directly, the ribbon cuttings and grievance hearings and emergency meetings that fill evenings and weekends. Jackson’s standing joke to Gomez’s wife carried the acknowledgment of that reality: Century got the better part of their marriage’s time, and the family lent it willingly.

She said she spoke with Gomez just last weekend, and even though he was dealing with health problems of his own, he still took the time to comfort her — something she said reflected how compassionate he was toward others.

“He is truly going to be missed here,” Jackson said. “Everybody looked forward to his block parties in May. That was a big day in the town. And he loved seeing other people happy and he didn’t mind helping people out in whatever capacity he could. He was not a selfish man. He would give, give, give, give and give. He loved what he was doing.”

The block parties Jackson described became a fixture of Century’s calendar under Gomez — gatherings that had no policy agenda and no budget line, only a mayor who believed a town holds together through the times its people spend face to face. In a community the size of Century, such events do the work that larger cities try to accomplish with festivals and community centers, and residents knew the May block parties as Gomez’s signature contribution to the town’s spirit.

A Serious, Dedicated Leader

Jackson, who sat on the council alongside Gomez during his time as mayor, said he took on a noticeably more serious demeanor once he stepped into the role. The easygoing neighbor who organized block parties became, in the mayor’s chair, a leader absorbed by the town’s practical problems — and none were more practical than its failing infrastructure.

She credited Gomez with bringing consultant Howard Brown on board to assist the town and with pushing hard to get the town’s aging lift stations repaired or replaced.

Lift stations are the unglamorous machinery of small-town life — the pumps that move sewage through low-lying terrain where gravity alone cannot carry it. When lift stations age, the consequences arrive without ceremony: overflows, backups, health hazards and repair bills that a small town’s budget struggles to absorb. For a mayor of Century, securing grants, hiring consultants and prioritizing which pump gets replaced first is the real substance of the job, and Jackson’s account makes clear that Gomez treated it that way, bringing in Brown’s expertise to guide a town with a limited professional staff through expensive, technical decisions.

Current Mayor Benjamin Boutwell, who was serving on the Century Town Council when Gomez was first elected in 2017, offered his condolences to Gomez’s family.

“My condolences to his family,” Boutwell said. “I’m sorry for what he had to go through, I know it’s difficult. As a councilman and former mayor of the town, he gave to his community. You’ve got to respect that and we thank him for that and his family.”

Boutwell said Gomez served the community with real passion, representing Century through some challenging times, and said he appreciated that dedication.

The tribute carried particular resonance given the intertwined careers of the two men. Boutwell’s resignation in 2023 created the vacancy Gomez was appointed to fill; Gomez’s resignation in 2025 put the town’s leadership back in Boutwell’s hands. Whatever the ups and downs of that exchange of offices, Boutwell’s words this week emphasized the through-line of Gomez’s service: he gave, the town received, and that deserves thanks.

Funeral Arrangements Announced

A celebration of life service will be held Saturday, August 22, at 2:30 p.m. at Pilgrim Lodge Missionary Baptist Church on Jefferson Avenue in Century. A viewing will be held Friday, August 21, from 4 to 7 p.m. at Jackson-McMurray Funeral Home in Century. Following Saturday’s graveside service, a repass will be held at the Century Community Center Ag Building on West Highway 4. Flowers may be sent to Jackson-McMurray Funeral Services at 130 West Hecker Road.

The venues themselves trace a map of the town Gomez served. Pilgrim Lodge Missionary Baptist Church on Jefferson Avenue is one of the longstanding congregations of the Century community, and churches of its size in rural Escambia County regularly host services for figures whose reach went beyond their own membership. Jackson-McMurray Funeral Home will receive friends and family Friday evening ahead of the Saturday rites.

The repass at the Century Community Center Ag Building on West Highway 4 will follow the graveside service — a gathering of the sort Gomez himself would have relished, a hall full of neighbors eating together and telling stories. The community center grounds host the town’s agricultural events and civic gatherings, and for many attendees it will be the site of one last shared meal in Gomez’s honor.

Century, a small town straddling the Florida-Alabama state line in Escambia County, Florida, has a long history as a railroad and mill town, and its close-knit civic life has often centered on local leaders like Gomez who take an active hand in day-to-day town affairs.

The town grew up around the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and the lumber industry that fed its mills, and a century of booms, busts and hurricanes has taught its residents to depend on their own institutions. Town government in Century is personal by necessity: the same residents who elect a mayor see him at the grocery store, the gas station and the block party. Leaders like Gomez, who embraced that closeness rather than enduring it, are the ones the town remembers.

Word of his death spread through Century and its surrounding communities on Sunday, drawing tributes from residents who had known him as a councilman, a mayor, a neighbor or simply the man behind the May block parties. In a town that measures its leaders by their presence among the people, Gomez’s record — recruited to run, elected twice without opposition, resigning only when his health demanded it — stands as the sort of civic biography Century does not soon forget.