Karen Ann Crump Bryson

Our dearly beloved wife, mother, grandmother, sister, daughter, aunt, cousin, and friend Karen Ann Crump Bryson returned home to her Heavenly Father on Mother's Day, May 10, 2026 — the most fitting of days for the most devoted of mothers to go to her Heavenly home.

She passed in nearly the twinkling of an eye at her home in Kaysville. She and Jared were home that morning, getting ready for Church. Not feeling well, she lay back down in bed and asked Jared to stay with her for a few minutes. He took her vitals — everything seemed mostly normal — and she took a sip of a protein shake, thinking it might help. Then, mid-sentence, she took two quick breaths, closed her eyes, and slipped peacefully through the veil. That part was so peaceful — no long suffering, no known trauma. Of course, in the moments that followed, every heroic lifesaving measure was attempted by Jared, by her daughter Sharie, and by the emergency medical personnel who came to help, but her heart did not beat again, and she did not take another breath. After 42 years of missing her father, 22 years of missing her husband, decades of caring for sweet Melanie and having lost her three years ago, and two years of missing her own dear mother — she was ready to go home. We miss her tremendously and rejoice in what must have been one of the most joyous reunions Heaven has seen in a very long time.

The song that describes her life best is the hymn she loved: Because I Have Been Given Much, I Too Must Give. That was her whole life in nine words. There is also a symmetry in her story we can hardly look at without tears. Karen lost her father, Delbert Grant Crump, when he was just 55 years old. Twenty years later, she lost her husband, Brent King Bryson, when he, too, was just 55. The strong Crump women — her mother MarDella and our own Karen — both became widows young, and both walked forward in faith, with grace, and with their hands full of other people's burdens.

Karen was born September 18, 1952, at Cottonwood Hospital in Murray, Utah — the first child, and a fifth-generation Crump daughter, of Delbert Grant Crump and MarDella LaRocco Crump. Her father, Delbert, was a beloved history teacher and school counselor who rose through the ranks of the public school system to become an elementary principal in Butler Elementary and then the founding principal of the brand-new Union Junior High and Principal at Brighton High School. Her mother, MarDella, worked for many years in the Jordan School District offices. From both, Karen inherited a sense of duty, a love of people, and a steady, capable work ethic that defined her whole life. She learned to love interior design, all types of flowers, crafts and ceramic painting. She was known affectionately to her friends as “Katrina” and “KC” or “KCB.” She kept her hands and her heart busy.

She grew up the eldest of four — big sister to Colleen and to the twins, Denise and Douglas — she grew up on Arizona Drive in Midvale. As a teenager, she was already pointed in the direction her whole life would take she served as a Candy Striper at Cottonwood Hospital — in the red-and-white pinafore of a hospital volunteer — and in her own words, she “loved it.” The caretaker was in her from the very beginning.

At Hillcrest High School, she ran in a tight pack of girlfriends and seemed to be in everything. She served as Vice President of the Pep Club, danced as a Songleader (cheer/drill), was a member of the Thespian Club, and was a Homecoming Nominee. She loved tennis, baseball, dancing, and sewing. She even modeled for ZCMI's Youngtimer line and graduated with honors. She was often described, simply, as “the pretty girl everyone wanted to be like.” And those Hillcrest friendships did not fade. She was, in fact, texting her best high school girls the very morning she passed.

Her first best childhood friend, back in seventh grade, was Bonnie Leavitt — and through the Leavitt family, Karen began working at age fifteen at Yankee Lunch, the family's hamburger drive-in. Bonnie was the kind of friend who opened doors, and that one led Karen straight into her first job and a lifetime of friendship.

Then, at just nineteen years old, she found the love of her life on a blind date. Brent King Bryson had just returned from his 2½-year mission to Sweden. Karen was still in high school. They were set up, and that was that — or so Brent believed. When he learned, mid-courtship, that Karen had accepted a date with another young man while she was off at BYU, he was not pleased. He drove down to Provo, waited outside her classroom, and set her straight: they were dating each other – exclusively! Soon after, with the steady confidence of a man who knew exactly what he wanted, he told her, “If you marry me, you will be wearing diamonds.” And so, she did. Karen turned nineteen in September of 1971, and on December 16, 1971, she married Brent in the Salt Lake Temple — sealed to him for time and all eternity, just before Christmas.

In her own tribute to Brent, written shortly after his passing, Karen described their marriage with the kind of plain devotion that needed no embellishment: “Brent was the Love of my Life. He was my best Friend. Time with him enriched my soul and spirit and gave me joy and strength.” Together they raised three children — Sharie Ann, Melanie Marie, and Jared Brent — and built a beautiful life in Bountiful. From early on, the family business selling school buses to Utah and surrounding states took center stage in their lives. It enriched her family's life as well as her extended family. Many family vacations were spent picking up school buses from back east and delivering them to local school districts. There are more “school bus stories” than there are school buses. Her favorite memories were Nauvoo, Sundance, Niagara Falls, Lisbon, and the many Blue Bird conventions they attended over the years. “How blessed we were the years we had him!” she wrote of Brent. “I will look forward to the Eternities and love him forever. My Dearest Husband! My own true love! I will love you forever!” They are finally together once again.

When Brent passed away on August 4, 2004, Karen was 51 years old. What came next was the bravest chapter of her life. The years that followed Brent's death were not gentle ones. Family businesses four generations deep are tender, complicated, and can quickly unravel when kingpins fall. After his passing, the household and the business both went through a season of upheaval. Karen weathered jealousies, disappointments, and losses no one expected her to weather alone. Her heart was broken many times. She loved deeply and fiercely, and that love came at a cost. And yet — and this is the thing — she chose, again and again, to keep loving. She kept her faith. She kept her grace. She weathered every storm like a queen. She also learned to forgive, and was valiant in making sure her own little family could remain happy in a time of deep sorrow.

Forty years before, in the first year of her own mother's widowhood, Karen had written in her journal: “I look at Mom and marvel at her strength.” She could not have known then that one day her own children would be saying exactly those same words about her.

Karen didn't sit still, either. With Brent gone, Karen, Sharie, Melanie and Jared began a new chapter together — building homes in Kaysville and Farmington and slowly putting down new roots in central Davis County. The work was hard, but the new life was a gift, and the friends she made there —Gaylynn & Darin Hammond, Colenda Judkins, Arlene and Wynn Gates and so many others — became treasures she carried with her to the end. We wouldn't trade those friendships for the world. In 2015, she beat uterine cancer. She loved to travel! She often spoke of the vacation of a lifetime to Portugal with Brent. They were sad they didn't just take the short flight up to Sweden to visit his mission. Without the yearly conventions, something had to be done — so she became a Marriott Family Vacation Club owner, taking the family yearly to Arizona, Southern California, all over Hawaii, and many other beloved spots as much as health allowed. It was hard to not travel in style after that! However, the family also enjoyed back-country cabins, fishing, pools, spas, and the like.

The greatest of her many labors of love was her Angel Melanie. For more than forty-five years, Karen walked beside her daughter through unimaginable medical suffering — chronic pain, more than thirty-five surgeries, countless emergency rooms, and seasons of complete, around-the-clock, tireless care. She accompanied Melanie to specialists in Palo Alto, California, and Houston, Texas; and in one of the bravest decisions of her life, she packed up and moved with Melanie to Gilbert, Arizona, for twelve months so Melanie could receive treatment at the Mayo Clinic. In 2020, Jared moved home during the pandemic, not knowing what the economy was going to do while he grew his real estate business. As the pandemic eased in 2022, Melanie's health declined rapidly. Karen, Jared, and Sharie together fought with her until the bitter end. Karen was a caretaker four generations deep — for her parents, for her husband, for her children, for her grandchildren — and her care was tireless, prayerful, and complete. When Melanie went home on January 6, 2023, our family ached and suffered greatly for more than two years. Karen had loved her through everything and losing her left a wound and vacancy that never quite closed on this side of the veil. Her beautiful, kind, and gentle “Angel Melanie” is now in her arms again.

Through it all, Karen's faith was the steady current beneath her life. A devoted member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she served in many callings throughout her life. In her early thirties, she served as Primary President over one of the largest primaries in northern Utah and carried that same warmth into every assignment that followed. She served as Compassionate Service Leader for over 15 years in the Bountiful 50th Ward (Bountiful Heights Stake). She thrived in that calling because once again she knew that she had been given much and was able to give. Mom and Dad made many, many friends from their “house on the hill overlooking the lake” — another dream of Karen's. They raised their kids there. They grew as a family there. Karen was a gifted pianist — at one point she could play every hymn in the hymnbook and could navigate keys up to seven sharps. She delighted in temple worship and looked forward eagerly to the miraculous local temple open houses. When she was born, there were 8 LDS Temples in the world. Today there are more than 380. She loved the gospel of Jesus Christ. She didn't have to shout her testimony from the rooftops; she stood where she was lived in life and served and blessed those around her.

Karen's grandparenting blueprint came from her own parents. Sharie had been the first baby born into the extended Crump family in twenty-seven years. Delbert and MarDella would sometimes drive up to Bountiful from Sandy three times a week just to see her. Grandpa Crump would chase her across the floor on his hands and knees as she crawled, her little bottle dangling and clenched between her teeth, and the two of them would laugh at each other. Karen never forgot that. Forty years later, she lived out that same blueprint for her own grandchildren.

Karen's grandchildren, Grace and Grant — Sharie's twins, Melanie's “world,” and her own two greatest joys — called her, simply, Grandma. Not Nana. Not Grams. Not Mimi. It had to always be Grandma. She loved that title more than any other she ever held — even Jared called her Grandma. She picked Grace and Grant up from school three and four times a week, drove them to karate and dance and basketball and soccer and every recital in between, and spoiled them shamelessly with ice cream. When they were about to turn three, she built an entire cement racetrack-style sidewalk that wraps all the way around her beautifully landscaped backyard, just for them to ride and run on. Sleepovers at Grandma's were the highlight of their childhood, and Grandma's house is their second home.

In February, Karen went in for a simple hernia repair and came out with the scare of a lifetime following surgery. After being home for only 4 hours — upon retiring to her bed — Jared noticed her breaths were extra shallow. Within a matter of minutes, her oxygen concentration fell from 84 to 75 and then to 58 before the ambulance could get to the house. She never stopped talking about her ambulance ride to a different hospital than we started in earlier that day. She was also in her fuchsia red nightgown and was a bit upset that the EMTs would not let her change out of before leaving the house. She didn’t realize how close to death she was. Arriving in the emergency department doctors worked feverishly to figure out why her lungs were not functioning properly. Three medications later, and on 16 liters of oxygen, Sharie asked the ER doctor, “Could she have aspirated during surgery?” The hospitalist immediately started an antibiotic to treat it. A miracle that Sharie thought of it — she saved her life that day. Karen spent 3½ days in Intensive Care on a HiFlow O2 machine, which also saved her life as she miraculously fought the infection off within 5–6 days. Once released from the hospital, she was certainly blessed with a quick hernia surgery recovery and very little pain.

Within weeks she was a new woman with a new lease on life. We were so grateful to watch her steadily come back to herself. She became completely independent — going out to eat with her girlfriends, going to Bombshell Studios to get her hair done by her favorite Ashton in Farmington, and back to the stores and shopping again. We were very blessed to have her healthy and well for Grant and Grace's baptismal service in April, where she bore what would be her final public testimony — something we will always cherish. Her last two months were full and bright. She started babysitting the grandkids again. She was thrilled! She saw Phantom of the Opera. She gathered with the whole family at The Roof Restaurant on Temple Square for an early Mother's Day dinner and toured the new grounds beforehand. She rallied like we hadn't seen her in years. She was on fire. She had joy, vigor, and stamina again. We will cherish those last month’s forever as a tender gift — the kind only a loving Father in Heaven would give a family in the tenderness of His mercies, just before saying, “It is time.”

We are so thankful and humble to call her our mom. Mom, this Mother's Day will always be a memory to us as the day you literally touched eternity. As you slipped through the veil, we hope the welcome on the other side was something as spectacular as you.

Survivors. Karen is survived by her son, Jared Brent Bryson; her daughter, Sharie Ann Bryson Scott (David); her grandchildren and the loves of her life, Grace and Grant; her sister, Colleen (Jeff) Clarke; her sister, Denise (Kevin) Webb; her brother, Douglas Grant (Olga) Crump; and many nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends who knew themselves dearly loved by her. She is preceded in death by her father, Delbert Grant Crump; her mother, MarDella LaRocco Crump; her beloved husband, Brent King Bryson; her cherished daughter, Melanie “Marie” Bryson; her father-in-law and mother-in-law, Glenn H. and Ellen K. Bryson; and many dear friends and family members.

Services. A viewing will be held Sunday, May 17, 2026, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Russon Brothers Mortuary, 1941 N Main Street, Farmington, Utah. A second viewing will be held Monday, May 18, from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Farmington West Stake Center, 2230 S 350 E, Kaysville, Utah. Funeral services will follow at 12:00 p.m. at the same chapel. Interment will be at Lakeview Memorial Cemetery of Bountiful, 1640 Lakeview Drive, Bountiful, Utah, where she will be laid to rest beside her dear Brent and her sweet Melanie.

The service will be streamed live on the Russon Mortuary & Crematory YouTube page as well as this obituary. The livestream will begin 10-15 minutes before the service and will be posted below.

In lieu of flowers, please send flowers. She loved them! The family wishes to thank the many friends, neighbors, ward members, and medical professionals who walked beside Karen through her many seasons. Thank you for loving her — and thank you for loving us. Please join us at http://www.KarenCBryson.com for more videos and stories. We would love for you to add your own as well.