Myra Darlene Peterson (née Carlstrom) a resident of Salt Lake City, Utah, returned to her Heavenly Father on February 13, 2019 at the age of 94.
She is survived by her daughter Julie Buhler (John), and son Douglas (Jessica), son Barry (Candice), daughter Suzanne Mumford (Drew), son Steve, fifteen grandchildren and twenty great-grandchildren. Her son Brian, preceded her in death in 2006, and her husband Reed Lawrence Peterson, whom she married on July 19, 1946 in the Idaho Falls Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, died in 1978 at the age of 57.
Myra was born on March 14, 1924 in Archer, (Madison County) Idaho, to Hilma Albertina Carlson and John Bertil Carlstrom, both converts to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who had immigrated with their families from Sweden. At the age of only three, Myra and her older sister Doris who was just six, lost their mother to Tuberculosis, One year later in 1928, their father \"Bert\" married their Aunt Elin Carlson,
(Hilma\s sister). The two young girls, would forever still, call their new mother with adoration, Aunt Elin\". Myra and Doris were cherished by a large extended Swedish Family of aunts, uncles and cousins, many of whom, helped settle Murray, Utah. They especially loved their father\s sister \"Aunt Anna\", who worked for a time as a cook for the actor John Boles in Hollywood, \"...she was constantly sending us beautiful clothes...during the Depression, we were the best dressed girls in Archer...\", Myra would explain.
Growing up through the Great Depression Myra, along with her sister Doris \"...experienced life with a childlike sense of adventure, and the most fantastic imagination....amidst the beautiful countryside, much like the Bronte sisters...\", they both liked to say. Myra excelled in school, winning spelling bees, acting in plays and spent years studying the piano with Doris, under the excellent tutelage of Mrs. Blanche Blossard, an accomplished teacher who had immigrated from France. As young women, the two girls would play duets together, holding piano recitals through-out the county, including a duet of Franz Schubert\s \"Serenade for Piano\", over a radio broadcast from the nearby town of Rigby, Idaho.
Myra attended Madison High School in the town of Rexburg, Idaho. She loved English Literature, Acting and Music and won an Idaho regional typing contest, a competition that only ended because they could find no one else who was qualified to compete against her. After graduation in 1942, Myra moved to Ogden, Utah where, because of her skills at the typewriter she was hired as a secretary at The United States Army Depot. In 1943 she moved to Santa Monica, California with her sister Doris, where they both were employed at Douglas Aircraft; Doris as a riveter on planes that were being built for the war effort, and Myra as always, with her skills as a typist, obtained a coveted position as a secretary in the front office.
Myra moved from Santa Monica, back to Utah and Salt Lake City in 1944, where she started her college education at the University of Utah. During this time she loved living with her Aunt Elsie and Uncle Kay in the Commander Apartments and spending time with her large extended family of double Carlstrom/Carlson cousins in Murray. On a break, back with her parents in Idaho, during the summer of 1946, she met and married her husband Reed. They settled into, and remodeled Reed\s grandparent\s original homestead house, situated amidst one of the E. L. Peterson Family Potato fields. Reed was employed by his parents (Lawrence and Caddie) as a manager of their \"E Brand Potato\" Empire. For fifteen years, Reed and Myra raised their six children in their lovely and sprawling home. It was a happy time filled with large, extended family parties, barbecues and dinners, family trips to Wyoming, Montana and the brand-new Disneyland in California. Every summer, they would vacation in Sun Valley, Idaho, as part of events with the Lions Club. During these years Myra was active with church callings, spending time with her sister Doris in Rexburg and hosting a popular ladies Bridge Club.
In 1962, Reed and Myra moved their family to Holladay, Utah- a lovely Salt Lake City suburb set just below Mt. Olympus. They opened a wholesale food business and take-out they called \"Pete\s Potato Pit\", specializing in the Peterson Family recipe of potato salad. The venue was located on State Street and 4500 South, until it was closed a few years later.
In 1968, Reed and Myra moved their family to Reno, NV, where, with his older sons Doug and Barry they started a wholesale jewelry business.
After only five months, this new enterprise took them to beautiful Monterey, California where they lived on the top floor of a turn-of-century, Victorian mansion that was only fifty yards from the historic California First Theatre, and just one block from the famous Fisherman\s Wharf. While
Reed and Barry continued their skills as jewelers, selling their fabricated silver designs to shops on the Wharf and around Carmel, Myra worked consecutively, at the United States Army Base at Fort Ord, and The Robert Louis Stevenson School for Boys in Pacific Grove. Until the end of her life, Myra would say, \"Our year in Monterey was one of the most remarkably beautiful, and yet very tumultuous years of my life.\"
In September of 1969, Reed and Myra, with their youngest Suzie and Steve, returned to live in the \"Avenues\" area of Salt Lake City. Myra with her great typing and secretarial skills quickly landed a job in the Monographs Order Department at the newly built and state-of-the-art Marriott Library, a contemporary five-story edifice, set on the campus as part of the rapidly growing University of Utah. It was there that Myra was always learning the latest and always changing IBM Select Computer Programs, the intricacies of Acquisitions, Ordering and Receiving, Special Collections, like the immense and well known Middle-East Section, and extensive Rare Books Department. For Myra, working at the Marriott Library was a providential blessing, one that kept her thinking and growing while meeting and working with co-workers from around the world.
Myra made many life-long friends and cherished so many associates who came and went. She worked full time for the University of Utah for nearly 30 years, then continued on for another seven years on a part time basis. By the age of 83, she was slowing down, but Myra still had the unique assignment as processor of all University Master\s Thesis, to be carefully edited, documented and catalogued; a process so tailored to her amazing abilities, her colleagues would accept ANY help she could offer. After a total of almost 38 years employed by the University of Utah at the Marriott Library, Myra finally retired with a party, amidst laughter and a pale full of tears. Shorty after, The University and Marriott Library Directors, invited Myra back, as one of the special guests at a reception for First Lady Laura Bush.
At the same time Myra was settling in to her new job at the University of Utah, Reed was designing his first retail jewelry store, one that he would call \"The Silver Torch\". This new, custom jewelry shop, stocked with silver and bezel-set, semi-precious stone jewelry, geode stands, specimen rocks, and metal sculptures- ALL made by Reed, opened in November of 1970.
The \"Silver Torch\" was part of a downtown renovation project by Clark-Leaming Design and offered a bright business opportunity for both Myra and Reed. Four years later, early in the spring of 1975, a fire damaged the main Arrow Press Square building that housed Reed\s charming and innovative \"Silver Torch\" forcing him to re-locate temporarily to a lobby location in the nearby Royal Inn Hotel.
After a few months trying to \"set up shop\" with the \"Silver Torch\" at the Royal Inn Hotel, Reed and Myra were persuaded by their son Barry, to move yet again, lock, stock and barrel up to their old favorite vacation haunt, the famous ski resort, Sun Valley, Idaho. Myra, who by then had worked at the Marriott Library for over five years
and loved her job, was placed in a difficult circumstance; as much as she loved Sun Valley, she felt that it was a risk to relocate Reed\s \"Silver Torch\" so she settled the situation temporarily, by taking a two month \"leave of absence\" from her position at the University of Utah. Within a few weeks of living with Barry, who was residing in Ketchum, Reed found a new location for the \"Silver Torch, inside the village of an exciting and new \"sister resort\" called \"Elkhorn at Sun Valley\".
It was another exciting time for Reed and Myra as they set out to design still another, hopefully lasting location for the \"Silver Torch\". The store\s new location in the Elkhorn Village was spectacular; a series of Bavarian style shops, restaurants and condominiums, a striking lodge, all set around an intimate year-round, open ice-skating rink and carousel. Elkhorn was so charming and unique, that Figure Skating\s Olympic Gold Medalist, Peggy Fleming had already filmed one of her iconic television specials there. Reed and Myra purchased a small condominium nearby, and together made the difficult decision that while Reed was building his new business, Myra should return to her job at the Marriott Library.
For the next three years, Myra commuted back and forth from Salt Lake City and Sun Valley, driving lickety-split in her 1968 Blue Camero, often with Suzie and/or Steve, where long weekends, holidays and summer \"spells\" etched lasting memories. During that time, Reed and Myra\s lives together were great when they were together and more difficult when they were apart because Myra, with her faithful intuition had been prompted, not to quit her coveted position at the University of Utah. Fate would reveal it\s full measure when, on March 12, 1978, Reed Lawrence Peterson died at the age of 57 from a cerebral hemorrhage after a series of heart attacks, while visiting Myra and the family in Salt Lake City. It was, of course a very difficult time for Myra, but she was, in the very least comforted by the fact she had followed the prompting, NOT to quit her job at the Marriott Library, a key decision that would direct and benefit her life for another three decades.
At the age of sixty four, one of Myra\s proudest moments occurred in June 1988 when, after forty-four years since her first class at the University of Utah, she completed her \"Bachelor of Arts\" Degree in English, at the University of Utah, walking at the commencement with her son-in-law Drew Mumford, who was also receiving the same degree in English. It was a very busy time for Myra, balancing her full-time job at the Marriott Library, flexing time into her schedule to take all of the required classes. She took on each course of subject with a voracity of spirit and intelligence, drawing upon her early love for school. As part of her curriculum, Myra took another leave of absence during the summer of 1986, engaging in a course of learning and travel in Europe, studying the \"Spanish Language and Culture\", at the University of Salamanca, Spain with her youngest son Steve, where she received a \"Certificate of Completion\"; a hard earned diploma that fulfilled her foreign language requirement. She would always speak of her experience in Spain with fondness, especially remembering additional travel to Vicenza, Italy where she stayed with her best friend Licia DeVita, a former co-worker from the Marriott Library. On two other occasions Myra returned to Europe, traveling through Scandinavia, where she spent considerable time in her parents native Sweden, she especially loving Stockholm, the city where her father was born. One of her most memorable Christmases was spent with a friend at The \"Brigham Young University Center\", in Jerusalem, where she studied and stayed, while visiting the many places where Jesus Christ had walked.
Myra was a devoted member of \"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Through-out her life and involvement in many different LDS Wards, she loved to teach, especially \"Cultural Refinememt\" lessons in Relief Society. Primarily, she had a deep Testimony of the \"Plan of Salvation\" through her Savior, Jesus Christ, She also had a beautiful voice, and loved to sing in the choir. Through-out her life and especially, during her final years, Myra would often reflect, as both GRATITUDE and GRACE would combine and wash over her, \"Aren\t we so Blessed, by our knowledge of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ through the Prophet Joseph Smith ? Isn\t it ALL just such a tremendous gift and MIRACLE?!\" Myra was undaunted in her knowledge and beliefs, and would readily defend, support and bear her Witness and Testimony, to anyone she discussed it with. At the same time, Myra was a supporter of Free-agency, the right to choose for yourself, she was without guile and accepted ANYONE for their beliefs, but that NEVER meant she gave up what she deeply knew herself, she was always ready to DISCUSS....
In her final years, Myra especially loved spending time with her family, six children and their spouses, fifteen grandchildren and their families, with twenty great-grandchildren, and counting !
Her longtime love of literature kept her reading constantly with dozens and dozens of titles; classics, autobiographies, history, contemporary novels, religious magazines, newspapers, the Reader\s Digest and even her long time subscription to Vogue Magazine \"kept a-coming\"\ accompanied with comments like, \"....do you think that I should wear my hair like that ?\" One of her last comments was while reading \The Book of Mormon\....\"THIS is really...MAGNIFICENT !\" She said, after a full day of study. In a corner, by her chair are stacks of books, and boxes packed everywhere of so many, many titles....., Her OWN,
\"Marriott Library\" so to speak, it makes one wonder..., \" What is Myra reading now...?!\" To be sure, it must be...INCREDIBLE...\"
LASTLY, Myra was a Swedish Country Girl, known through-out her life for her Movie-star
beauty, her polish and grace...her sense of style and sweet manner, that lovely smile that immediately took you in, then helped you feel better about absolutely everything. Myra\s inner spirit, matched her outer beauty...and as the two merged more completely..., she WAS.....simply,
BREATHTAKING.
Funeral Services will be held Tuesday, February 19, 2019 at 3 pm at Larkin Mortuary, 260 East South Temple, Salt Lake City, where a viewing will be from 1:30 to 2:45 prior to services.
Graveside Services will be Wednesday, February 20, 2019 at 1 pm at the Fielding Memorial Park Cemetery, Idaho Falls, Idaho.
