Wayne D. Griffiths

If you knew our dad, Wayne, you probably heard him say, “Let me tell you…” a few hundred times. When Wayne Griffiths said, “Let me tell you,” there was a good chance you were about to hear a story, lecture, his opinions, or receive advice - possibly all these things.

So today, it seems fitting that we start the same way:

Let us tell you… about our dad.

Wayne D. Griffiths passed away on August 27, 2026, four months before his 94th birthday. Trying to summarize 93 years of our father’s life is nearly impossible.

Here are the facts. They are remarkable on their own.

Dad was born on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1932, in Salt Lake City, the youngest of five children born to Henry Walter Griffiths and Zella Smith Griffiths.

Even his arrival came with a story. There were whiteout conditions on that Christmas Eve night. After Wayne was born, the doctor’s automobile became stuck in a ditch on his way home. Somehow, in all of that, Dad’s birth was never properly recorded, and he did not have an official birth certificate for decades.

His mother, Zella, apparently saw an opportunity. Without a birth certificate, she could enroll Wayne in public school when he was only four years old. That may have been an indication that Wayne Griffiths was going to do things a little differently.

Wayne grew up on Blair Street in Salt Lake City, attended South High School and the University of Utah, became an officer and pilot in the United States Air Force, served overseas, and spent 31 years with the FAA at the Salt Lake Center as an air traffic controller and supervisor.

He married Barbara Ann Parry in 1964, and they began their family in their home on 1700 South in Bountiful. Wayne worked, provided, and saved. Over the course of his life, he built a home from the ground up, suffered tremendous loss, experienced success, traveled, played a little, and kept moving forward.

These are the facts, but they don’t completely tell you who Wayne Griffiths was.

If we had to describe our dad in five words, they would be:

1. Dedicated.
2. Hard-working.
3. Resilient.
4. Smart.
5. Driven.
6. 
   

And because we’re here to tell the truth about Wayne, we will add one more word: stubborn.

Long before we knew him as “Dad,” Wayne was a kid running around Blair Street. He was considerably younger than his four brothers and sisters who were Thelma, Wesley, June and Jerry. Thelma was twenty-one when Wayne was born. Zella, his mother, was 41 when he was born. Because of this, the older brothers, Wes and Jerry, played an important role in Wayne’s upbringing.

Before airplanes, careers, houses, and the responsibilities that would eventually define Wayne, there were the Bobcats. Wayne and his neighborhood friends, including Ron Nielsen and Deal Griggs, had their own group and proudly called themselves the Bobcats. They spent days outside, entertaining themselves and inventing their own games, one they named “Long Ball.”

Eighty years later, Wayne could still remember those boys, their names, playing long ball, and being a Bobcat. Before Wayne Griffiths had airplanes to fly, people to provide for, or an FAA Center to run, he was a kid on Blair Street with his buddies.

When Wayne attended the University of Utah, Wes and Jerry decided their younger brother needed practical career advice. They put the choice to him simply:

“Would you rather sleep in a bed with clean sheets or sleep in a foxhole?”

Then they told him: “If you like sheets, you’d better get into ROTC and join the Service as an officer. That will keep you out of the foxholes.”

Wayne did listen to them. He joined ROTC and entered the United States Air Force as an officer. Dad told us this story often and made us promise to mention it in his obituary. Wes and Jerry probably had no idea that their advice pointed Wayne toward something that shaped the rest of his life.

Wayne began flight school in January 1956. He trained in aircraft that included the T-34 Mentor and T-28 Trojan. During his training, Wayne showed his resilience and maybe stubbornness, too.

Wayne and his flight instructor were in the air when they realized their airplane was on fire. With the instructor’s experience, Wayne’s training, and some quick thinking, they managed the emergency and got the airplane safely back on the ground.

Wayne was scared. But the next day, he got back into the pilot’s seat. He didn’t quit. He didn’t decide flying wasn’t for him. He continued through flight school and graduated near the top of his class.

After graduating from flight school, Wayne flew the C-123 Provider, a twin-engine military cargo plane designed to take off and land on short, unimproved runways and to move people and cargo to difficult places. Wayne’s Air Force service took the kid from Blair Street overseas to France where he flew cargo planes carrying atomic bombs during the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis.

Wayne was a First Lieutenant and then a Captain. He was in the Air Force Reserves into the early 1960s, before the demands of his FAA career led him to focus fully on civilian aviation.

The Air Force never really left him. The discipline, confidence, seriousness, and sense of responsibility he developed as an officer and a pilot became part of who he was.

Wayne began working at the FAA Salt Lake City Air Route Traffic Control Center when computer technology began to change air traffic control. After extensive training, he was one of the first to work with the new computerized systems that controlled higher altitude aircraft across eight western states.

He advanced quickly as an air traffic controller and became a supervisor. There were many days when Wayne was the senior person at the Center. He was responsible for everything happening at the center as well as everything happening in 350,000 square miles of airspace. He took that responsibility seriously. Thousands of people flew through airspace that our father helped manage without ever knowing the name Wayne Griffiths.

Our dad didn’t need them to know his name. He just needed them to arrive safely.

On one occasion, however, Wayne directed a pilot who had clipped the top of some trees in a thick northwest forest. This man came to know Wayne’s name. In fact, he called Wayne every year on the anniversary of the accident and thanked him for saving his life.

Wayne understood both sides of the radio. He knew what it was like to sit at a console responsible for airplanes moving across the sky, and he knew what it was like to sit inside an airplane and depend upon the guidance of the person on the ground.

Wayne retired from the FAA shortly before his 55th birthday. For most people, 31 years and a successful career would have been enough. But not for our father. He had no interest in just “sitting around.”

After the FAA, he shuttled cars for a Chevrolet dealership. Then he spent eleven more years driving a school bus for Davis County School District. This progression is fitting. Dad flew and controlled airplanes. He shuttled automobiles. He drove buses. If he had found a train somewhere, he would have covered the entire transportation system!

Wayne earned the right to retire, but he just wasn’t finished working. Work was part of who he was.

Nevertheless, he did play sometimes. He coached Dean’s baseball team. He took us camping. When we drove down a dirt road and arrived at our campground, Wayne’s first order of business was washing the car! Camping was not a magical Griffiths tradition. Camping was…..difficult. But we also had fun,

Wayne played some golf. He and Barbara traveled throughout the USA and Israel and Europe.

Dad flew to St Louis, Missouri to deliver Christmas packages to Susan’s family because he had free flight privileges. Apparently, he thought, “Why should I pay for postage when I can deliver packages for free?”

Wayne’s priorities included thriftiness, hard work, and taking care of things you worked for.

That applied to the boat. Like most things he owned, there were rules. One of them was: “Don’t Get the Boat Wet!” This was a strange rule for something that belongs in the water. Dad had checklists for how to take care of the boat before, during, and after our boating outings. Bonnie remembers helping Dad wax the bottom of the boat, just like he waxed his cars (on a weekly or monthly basis).

The waterskiing trips to Pineview Reservoir were some of our favorite childhood memories. We spent entire days together on the lake, and yes, we got the boat wet!

***

One of Bonnie’s favorite memories was the tetherball set that Dad made for her. He took an old tire, filled it with cement, and put a pole in the middle. Before the cement dried, he gave her a nail and let her etch her name into it. Dad saw something his daughter would enjoy, and instead of buying one, Wayne built it himself. It brought hours of fun to the whole neighborhood.

Wayne and Barbara met on a blind date. Both of them had been married before. Wayne brought his daughter Susan Kaye into the relationship, and Barbara brought her daughter Bonnie Ann. Susan and Bonnie became sisters. Mom and Dad created a blended family. Then came Paul Wayne, and 15 months later came Dean Michael. Then the fun began!

Mom and Dad had a traditional marriage. Dad worked. Mom took care of Dad, the kids and the house. It is clear to us, as their children, that Wayne would not have been able to build the life he was so proud of without Barbara. She gave him the opportunity to be the provider he believed he needed to be. She gave him the opportunity to be proud of his career, financial security, home, and yard. While Dad worked all those hours, Mom held everything else together with unconditional love and ability to stretch a dime.

Dad knew what he liked. And he knew what he didn’t like. He was a meat-and-potatoes guy: plain food; nothing too exotic. Onions? No. Garlic? Absolutely not! For a man who had lived in Europe, he came home with remarkably little interest in broadening his culinary horizons.

Dad grew up during the Depression, which shaped his relationship with both food and money. Food was practical. Money was something you earned and saved.

Dad thought the food in the officers’ mess hall was some of the best food in the world. Later, he was happy with a simple meal from Maddox Ranch House in Perry, Utah.

Meat. Potatoes. No surprises.

Life on 1700 South was great, but in 1977, Dad began working on his dream: building a custom home on their lot above Davis Boulevard. Dad loved the work—he built the footings and brickwork around the fence. The thing that Dad was most proud of is that he paid cash for it.

Wayne’s pride in life could be boiled down to three things: His job. His house. His yard. He had a specific way of mowing the lawn, and he would tell anyone who dared step on the grass to “Get off my lawn.”

This may sound like an old-man stereotype, but for Wayne Griffiths, it was an official property-management policy.

Bonnie once learned how seriously Dad was about lawn maintenance. Mom and Dad went on vacation. Dad put Bonnie in charge of watering the lawn. His instructions were clear: “Do not let the grass burn.”

Bonnie was serious, too! She watered. And watered. And watered some more…. until the basement flooded! In Bonnie’s defense: The lawn never burned…and no one was standing on it either.

Dad was driven in every aspect of taking care of his home, and that part of his routine had no age limit.

He was still climbing on his roof at 90 years old. Most families worry about their 90-year-old father falling while getting out of a chair.

We would look out the window and ask ourselves: “Why in the hell is Dad on the roof?” Dad’s answer would be simple: “Because there were leaves in the gutters.”

Dad had his own “love language” and it was: the act of being responsible and taking care of his responsibilities.

He maintained the house, took care of the yard, and he made certain that the family had what they needed. He was a faithful husband. He experienced tragedy. He lost his brother, Jerry, an Air Force Test Pilot, too soon. He may not have always known how to express love in words, but his life showed what mattered to him.

There was a chapter in our family’s life that changed all of us. In 1982, we lost our brother Paul in an automobile accident. Paul was 16 years old. He was special, smart, and cultured. Hem spoke to us in French at the dinner table when he wanted us to pass him something. He was having fun. We were frustrated. He was an exceptionally gifted pianist.

Dean was a sports junkie, a little rough around the edges and, well...more than a little mischievous.

Paul’s death was devastating. Mom lost her son. She tried desperately to hold the family together. Dad responded by going to work. Work was something Dad could control. At work, if there was a problem or something that needed to be done, he knew how to do it. He could fix it. Paul’s death was not fixable. It was not even comprehendible. Paul was not “just the son who died.” He was our brother, mom and dad’s son, a remarkable young man, and he will never be forgotten.

Around February, Dad’s age started winning. Losing independence was especially difficult for a man who spent his life being responsible for things and people. Depending on other people was not something Wayne Griffiths liked to do.

Dad was independent. He was in control. He could also be the life of the party, and he had the “gift of gab. Last week in the emergency room, his body failing him, Dad was friendly and talkative. People always knew when Wayne Griffiths was in the room. At ninety-three years old, Wayne was still Wayne. Life had taken a lot from him, but it hadn’t completely taken him away.

Dad wasn’t a religious man, but he always seemed to know there was “something more.” He simply understood that this life was not all there was. He often told stories about the good timing of events, or the breaks he got in life. When he did this, he said it was due to “the man upstairs.”

Now, we picture our father reunited with Paul, his beloved mother and father, Zella and “Walter,” his role models: Wes and Jerry, and his loyal sisters, Thelma and June.

If there is a house or a yard where he is, he’s probably working on whatever needs fixing.

Our Dad, Wayne D. Griffiths, lived through parts of ten decades. He was born during the Great Depression, a child during World War II, and as an adult, he was an integral part of aviation and the “jet age.”

He was not perfect. Neither are we, nor is anyone here. We are not honoring perfection; we are honoring a unique person whose life made the world a better place. As his children, we hope that the things he taught us will continue through the generations of our families.

We think of that young Air Force pilot and the things he learned when his plane was on fire.

• Sometimes life is scary.
• Things happen that are out of your control.
• You lose people who you thought would always be there.
• Sometimes it’s hard to move forward.
• 
  

In a life and death situation, young Wayne and his instructor reacted quickly and landed the plane, but what happened after the landing, is a great lesson to us all:

Morning came. Wayne got up. He went to the airfield. He climbed back into the pilot’s seat.

We constantly saw our father get up, show up, be responsible, keep going. He was dedicated, hard-working, resilient, smart, and driven. He showed us all how to do it.