Don LeFevre

Louis Don LeFevre died peacefully of natural causes, surrounded by his children, on February  20, 2019.

Don was born October 6, 1933, in the Cottonwood Stake Maternity Hospital in Murray, Utah, the second son of John Alphonso and Valora Ella Allsop LeFevre. He was reared in the then-small town of Sandy, where he attended elementary school and junior high school. He then became a loyal “Beetdigger” at Jordan High School, where he graduated in 1951.

After high school, he worked as an advertising dispatch clerk and then mail clerk, first for the Salt Lake Tribune and later for the newly created Newspaper Agency Corporation. He entered the U.S. Army in 1953 and after 16 weeks of basic training at Fort Ord, California, he spent the remainder of his two years of military service with the Artillery Medical Detachment of the 1st Armored Division at Fort Hood, Texas. He then enrolled at the University of Utah, where, in his senior year, Sigma Delta Chi, the professional journalism society, named him the outstanding graduate.

During his university studies, Don worked evenings as a nurse’s aide at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Salt Lake City, where he met his future wife and sweetheart, Bonnie Bloom, a registered nurse. He interrupted his university studies to serve an LDS mission in the Eastern States, where he served as a district supervisor and as a “traveling elder”. Upon his return from his mission, he and Bonnie were married in the Salt Lake Temple on October 22, 1959, by Elder Hugh B. Brown of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. After 57 wonderful years, his beloved “Bubbles”, as he affectionately called her, passed away on January 14, 2017.

While at the university, Don earned an internship as a news reporter at the Salt Lake Tribune and remained on the staff as a religion (all religions) writer after his graduation. However, he soon was offered a position with David W. Evans and Associates, a Salt Lake advertising and public relations company. With the Evans firm, he was an account executive and copywriter for a variety of commercial clients, but his primary client was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While with the Evans agency, he represented the Church in dealing with the news media for eleven years. In 1973, after the Church organized its own public affairs office, he was invited to join the staff, served another 25 years as a news media spokesman and held a number of positions, including Director of Media Relations. He enjoyed representing the Church in dealing with local, national and international media reporters and photographers over the years and in 1992 he was named "Honorary Publisher" of the Utah Press Association.

Don particularly enjoyed his public relations assignments with the Church's Hill Cumorah Pageant in Palmyra, New York (ten years), and at world's fairs in New York, San Antonio, Texas, and Spokane, Washington. He also enjoyed calling on news media outlets in Europe (Germany, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland) in advance of a series of Area Conferences. On another occasion he called on news media outlets in Israel to promote the Church's Orson Hyde Memorial Garden on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

He was a sports fan(atic), but was not very athletic. He did, however, enjoy tennis and bowling before his "senior years" caught up with him. He was weekend broadcast news editor for the Salt Lake City bureau of The Associated Press (A.P.) from the mid-1960s to the early '70s. From 1970 to 1993 he "moonlighted" as a sports reporter for The A.P., reporting for the wire service on home basketball games of the Utah Stars and Utah Jazz basketball teams and University of Utah home basketball and football games.

Don and Bonnie reared their family of four sons and a daughter in their beloved Bountiful, Utah, where they set up housekeeping shortly after their marriage. He responded to a variety of Church callings, including counselor in a ward Young Men presidency, senior president of a Stake Seventy’s Quorum, first counselor in a Stake mission presidency, ward Sunday School president, first counselor in a Stake Sunday School Presidency, High Priest group instructor, stake historian and director of the Laie, Oahu, Hawaii Temple Visitors Center. He also served several years as an ordinance worker at the Bountiful Utah Temple and two years at the Laie Hawaii temple.

He was a former president at the Timpanogos dinner club and in his younger years he served as a Republican  Party precinct chairman, as a delegate to the state GOP convention, and as a member of the Bountiful Law Observance Advisory Board. In addition, he served for a period of time as a public relations adviser for the Utah Heart Association and for a local Boy Scouts of America council.
Don loved regular summer family vacations at Newport Beach, Calif., and he and Bonnie enjoyed frequent travels in the U.S. and Canada, highlighted by numerous fall-foliage tours of New England and the Southeast.

He is survived by sons David (Shellie), Jeffrey (Dean), Scott (Debbie), Thomas (Bonnie), and daughter Rebecca "Becky" (Dan) Sims; 20 grandchildren: Callie, Candice (Keith), Piper (Zach), Danielle, Emily, David aka "Buddy", Brett (Jennie), Dan (Ally), Eric (Angel), Annie, Christian, Sam, Christine (Taylor), Abby, Lottie (Duncan), Sam, Jake, Landon, Annie and Gabe; Great-grandchildren Caleigh, Catherine, Ryan, Zach, Remington, Marshall, Lily, Hazel, Jackson, Ellie, Joseph, Flint, Brock and Ezra. Also surviving is a sister Maris (Duane) Olson.

Preceding him in death, besides his beloved wife, Bonnie, were his parents, a sister Joan LeFevre, brothers Gaylen Jack LeFevre and Richard Jon LeFevre, and granddaughter Sarah Lily LeFevre.

A viewing will be held from 6-8 pm, Sunday, February 24, 2019 at Russon Mortuary, 295 North Main, Bountiful, Utah. Funeral services will be held at 11:00 am, Monday, February 25, 2019, at the Bountiful Central stake, 640 South 750 East, Bountiful, Utah, with a viewing from 9-10:30 am, prior to services. Online guestbook at www.russonmortuary.com.