Betty Jo Page Davis Obituary

Betty Jo Page Davis, born August 4, 1931, died at home peacefully and surrounded with love on October 23, 2021, at the respectable age of 90. She was a rosy-cheeked farm girl from Pleasant Grove, Utah, who could milk cows and drive trucks and bake the world’s best orange rolls. She was also a polyglot globe-trotting adventurer who could fly an airplane, ride a motorcycle, tame wild horses, and domesticate sullen teenagers. She could wail on the saxophone, hold forth on the viola, and astonish on the piano. She composed poems as gifts and odes as offerings, and the most anticipated moment at every family event was Grandma Betty Jo shyly standing up to read a hilarious and touching original poem scribbled in shorthand on a receipt or the inside of an envelope.

Her fanclub is worldwide. Today, people from Maine to Oregon to Hawaii to Germany are mourning her passing, remembering the infinite ways she delighted in the world.

She is survived by her sister Margene Page Edwards, who was her first dear friend. She still has close friends from her school days in Pleasant Grove. In 1946 she took the Provo Big Band scene by storm and won the heart of the flashiest soloist, a lanky kid named Duane Davis, who was later lucky enough to be married to her. After high school she hopped on a train and moved to Manhattan to work as an orderly at a mental hospital and later to work as a typist in San Francisco. When she was a student at BYU, working in the English department and majoring in English, she braved the Atlantic and went to Europe, and not-so-coincidentally happened to chance upon Elder Davis where he was serving in Germany. Later, she moved all around the country-- Baltimore, Kentucky, Washington, and Utah-- with her growing gaggle of kids.  

She was a teacher and a librarian. She taught piano lessons and took in stray teenagers who blossomed under her relentless love and acceptance. She settled down in Orem, Utah and loved her rural property and the horses she kept there. She was active in her LDS ward, playing the organ at concert-caliber, cheerfully embellishing ordinary hymns to harmonic transcendence. She served a proselytizing mission to Germany in 2002, keeping up with sister missionaries five decades her junior. She was an adoring grandma, and traveled all over the world visiting her kids and grandkids. She was a collector of malapropisms and she delighted in punplay.  

She was happy and content anywhere she went-- any hardship she’d wave away with a twinkle-- it wasn’t so bad! She never met a superlative she didn’t like. Every meal was the most delicious, every baby the most precious. She delighted in her family and friends-- she had an x-ray vision gift of seeing through their prickliness or trauma or shyness or resentment to the pure gold of the soul underneath.  Everyone who met her loved her. And she loved everyone, without caveat or judgment.

She was true North. 

For all her adventuring and the astonishing scope of her experiences and talents and friendships, there wasn’t a jaded or arrogant cell in her body. The terrible tragedies that happened to her didn’t poison her or sharpen her-- they made her even kinder, wiser, and more gentle with the people around her. 

Everyone who met her will tell you, laughing, “I was her favorite.” Because when she was with you, you knew it was true. You are her favorite. All of you. And you always will be.

Today she is back in the arms of her dear parents, Bert and Ina, and with her dear daughter Kira, and her son Spencer and grandsons Ian and Matt, granddaughter Sarah, and her dearest friend Frances. She is survived by her children, Mark (Andi), John (Lisa), Steve (Michele), Anne (Alan Barker), Mike (Giselle), Alan (Debra), Jeff (Kara), and Randall (Angela), and loved forever by her 41  grandkids and 39 great-grands. And by innumerable friends whom she loved and who love her, the way we love the sun. We will continue to grow from her superlative example. She is the kindest, most beautiful, most loving, most generous, smartest, funniest, most gorgeous and best person, literally ever. We won’t say goodbye. We’ll just say, see ya! 

A memorial celebration will be held in her honor at 11:00 am, Saturday, October 30, at the Hillcrest 8th Ward Meetinghouse, 1035 South 800 East, Orem, with a viewing prior to the service from 9:30 to 10:30am, and on Friday, October 29, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm at the Olpin Sundberg Mortuary, 495 South State Street, in Orem.