Donna Curtis Martinson, age 85, passed away April 15, 2015 of consequences incident to age. Memorial services will be held at Larkin Mortuary, 260 E. South Temple, at 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 9, 2015. This will be followed by a celebration of Donna's life for family and close friends from 5 to 7 p.m. at Finn's Cafe, 1624 S. 1100 East.
Donna was born February 24, 1930 in Norfolk, Nebraska to Burton Leon Curtis and Velma Holt Curtis. After graduating East High School in Salt Lake City and attending the University of Utah, she married and forever loved Donald Owen Martinson. Into their home came Pamela, Jon, Eric, James, Nancy, Dana, Donald Jr. and Holly. Her sweetheart Don, two sons (Eric and James) and two daughters (Holly and Nancy) preceded her in death, as did her parents and two brothers.
She adorned her eighty-five years and fifty days with rare intelligence, extraordinary beauty, mystical creativity, and innate elegance. But what informed her most was the quiet, constant and unconditional love which warmly and wonderfully enveloped all who truly knew her. None treasured this more than the family who survive her ‚ four children, fourteen grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.
Perhaps the most faithful portrait of Donna is contained in words she herself wrote to celebrate the earliest days of her marriage to Don:
"Within two hours after our wedding in Los Angeles, we are on our way to San Francisco, and as the plane makes a wide arc above the ocean, I have my first glimpse of that city ‚ all verdant green and dazzling and blue, it takes my breath away with its beauty.
"I love the sound of the fog horns, low and muted ‚ the rattle, click and clang of the cable cars. I love the high cliffs and deep ravines with the ocean churning far below ‚ the camellias and rhododendrons, the sparkle of white stucco buildings and endless procession of steamers, freighters and merchant ships in and out of the bay.
"We are young and in love and we play house in a Richmond flat with parquet floors and braided rugs.
"A child is born and so also does one die. The first has black curls and turquoise eyes and we make a nest for her in a dresser drawer and stay awake all night watching as she sleeps. Twin boys next, one of whom is too tiny to survive. How can you be happy and grieve at the same time?
"But all of that, and more, is part of the fabric of that pulsating time and place and how we lived and loved, rising and falling on the tides of our passion, forever in my memory."
Beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend: You, too, live forever in our memory.
