Marolyn Jones Siddoway passed away at home surrounded by her family on September 18, 2018. Her constant and quiet service, friendliness, hospitality, domestic gifts, and love blessed generations of family and friends. Born on November 29, 1923, in Cedar City, Utah, the oldest child of Lehi Milton and Bernella Elizabeth Gardner Jones and the first baby born in the new Iron County Hospital, Marolyn greatly enjoyed her growing up years in Cedar City.
Part of the last Cedar City High School class to attend the Branch Agricultural College (later SUU), Marolyn later graduated from the B.A.C., where she made lifelong friends and participated in student government, the school newspaper, and the orchestra. She then moved to Salt Lake City to attend and graduate from the University of Utah in 1945 with a degree in Business. Some of the happiest years of Marolyn’s life took place in Washington, D.C., where she went in 1945 to work for Congressman Walter K. Granger.
She loved living in the nation’s capital and, while attending the LDS Washington Ward, met George Washington Medical School graduate John Lewis Siddoway, Jr., a Vernal, Utah native. They were married in the Salt Lake Temple on September 29, 1947 and spent a San Francisco honeymoon together before John went to Korea with the United States Army Medical Corps. Reunited in April 1948, they returned to Washington, D.C. where Marolyn gave birth to their first two children.
They loved the friendships they formed in Washington and continued reuniting with them for the rest of their lives. John and Marolyn moved to Holladay, Utah in 1952, where John set up a pediatric practice and Marolyn went on to raise six children. She created an organized, well-fed, and enriching home that welcomed many visitors from all over the world, one of whom became part of the family.
Marolyn also served in the Primary, Young Women, and Relief Society organizations of her LDS ward, sang in the Relief Society “Singing Mothers,” and played her violin in the local Holladay Messiah performances. Her greatest service, though, consisted of quiet acts of kindness in the form of homemade bread, hot meals, and consistent phone calls, letters, and friendship extended to everyone around her. Marolyn also enjoyed traveling with her husband throughout the U.S. and to their children’s missions in Italy, Norway, Thailand, Brazil, and France, as well as to Spain and on tours to the British Isles, the primary location of her ancestry.
As a Utah Medical Auxiliary volunteer, she worked to implement use of baby car seats in the 1970s and also became involved with the Utah Federation for a Drug Free Youth and other community projects. She took continuing education classes at the University of Utah and at the LDS Institute and remained a lifelong reader. Marolyn was a hands-on grandmother to 30 grandchildren and 38 great-grandchildren, all of whom enjoyed returning to the Siddoway homestead for wonderful meals, generous hospitality, and their grandmother’s wisdom and great sense of humor.
They respected and learned from her deep integrity as well as her soft-spoken but firm faith in Jesus Christ. Marolyn is survived by her children Roger (Marsha), John (Judy), Scott (Debbie), Barbara Faust, Betsy (Jed) VanDenBerghe, Mark (Nancy), her sister Joan Woodbury and brothers Kerry and Ken Jones. Preceded in death by her sister Cynthia Line and brother Jackson.
Funeral services will be held Saturday, September 22, 2018 at 1:00pm at the Holladay Stake Center, 4568 South Holladay Boulevard, Holladay, UT; where friends and family can visit Friday evening 6:00-8:00pm and Saturday morning 11:30am-12:30pm prior to the service. Interment at Holladay Memorial Cemetery.
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