Elaine Walker

Elaine DeGraff Walker died August 11, 1998, at the American Fork Hospital.

She was born April 25, 1912, in Heber, Utah, to Charles and Nellie Clyde DeGraff. She married Jess R Walker December 23, 1937 in the Salt Lake Temple. Jess died last year, the year they would have celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.

She is survived by four children, Robert (Judy), Steve (Ardith), Lynn (Linda), and the light of her life, Marda (Cloyd) Atwood. Elaine is sister to Jay DeGraff of Spanish Fork and Dale DeGraff of Boise. Her older sister Helen and younger brother Clyde preceded her in death. She is grandmother to 22 and, by her own count as of last week, great-grandmother to 38 going on 40.

Elaine Walker was a woman of many facets-Heber's scrawniest but maybe toughest tomboy, twice best high school saxophonist in the state of Utah, third in her Wasatch High School graduating class, though she "giggled her way through high school," lead singer and player in a Roaring Twenties all-girls band, one of the earliest fulltime female missionaries for the Mormon Church, marcher in the BYU band that won the national championship, one of few people ever to elope to the temple, mangler with her bare hands of a huge blowsnake that made the mistake of slithering into her baby's playpen, member of stake boards for the Primary, MIA, Sunday School, and Relief Society, one of the rare parents to regularly win pushup contests with football-playing sons, President of the Utah Librarian's Association, and maybe the finest mother in the history of mothers.

In addition to all that, she was a teacher, and an unusually versatile one. She taught in a rainbow of capacities for her church. After her return to public school teaching in 1950, Elaine for a quarter century taught physical education, English, history, pep club, even driver's education in Heber and Lehi. For the last decade of her public teaching service she worked as librarian at Lehi Junior High School, and did that so well that her library colleagues throughout the state honored her as President of their association.

Elaine mentions in passing in her life history: "I threw myself heart and soul into everything." "That's how those who knew her well saw her life. Whether chasing deer out of her rosebeds or teaching thickheaded junior high kids a thing or two, or singing that full-throated alto under her beloved Jess' tenor in wedding and funeral "Whispering Hopes," Elaine Walker in her living and her loving, always threw herself into everything, heart and soul--so much-so that much of the heart now seems gone out of things for us."

Funeral service will be held Saturday, August 15, 1998 at 11 a.m. in the Old White Manila Chapel, 3986 West 8800 North, Pleasant Grove. Friends may call Friday evening from 6-8 p.m. at Olpin Family Mortuary, 500 South 300 East, Pleasant Grove and at the church on Saturday from 9:45-10:45 a.m. Burial will be in the Pleasant Grove City Cemetery.

The Salt Lake Tribune, August 13, 1998, Page D6

• Updated from Find A Grave Memorial via mother Nellie DeGraff (born Clyde) by SmartCopy: May 19 2015, 11:46:07 UTC