Muriel Mae Mortensen Christensen died at age 105 on June 14, 2024, at her Bountiful, Utah home of natural causes. She was born on March 31, 1919, in Cleveland Utah, to Harry and Myrtle Mortensen. She was the oldest of 5 children, having three sisters (Lael, Arva Lue, Ona) and one brother (Boyd).
Muriel outlived her husband and high school sweetheart, Wallace Christensen by over nine years. They had six children: Colin (Kathleen) of Cedar Hills, UT, Merilee (Mark) of Sandy, UT, Noel (Michelle) of Lee’s Summit, MO, Brian of Bountiful, UT, Kevin (Shauna) of Canonsburg, PA, Blake (Becky) of Lawrence, KS.
The funeral will be held on Wednesday, June 19th, 2024, at 11:00 a.m. at the Bountiful Utah Orchard Stake Center, 3599 S Orchard Drive, Bountiful UT. Viewings will be held Tuesday 6-8 p.m. at Russon Mortuary, 295 N Main, Bountiful, Utah, and from 9:45 – 10:45 a.m. (prior to the funeral) at the Orchard Stake Center.
Services will be streamed live on the Russon Brothers Mortuary Facebook page and on this obituary page. The live stream will begin about 10-15 minutes prior to the service and will be posted below.
Muriel had a bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate from Brigham Young University. She taught school in Utah and later Kansas City, Missouri. She was always active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She served in many callings over the years including a nine-year span as a Guide Patrol leader (Primary’s 11-year-old boys), long enough to teach her oldest through her next to youngest sons. With her husband, Wallace, she served as a senior missionary in the Washington D.C. area, working in the Mission Office during weekdays and with Asian members in the evenings and on weekends. They also served as missionaries for a year in the Genealogy Department in the Church Office Building. Muriel also spent countless hours doing record extraction and later indexing of genealogical records.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, while Wallace was serving in the U.S. Army, Muriel’s mother felt a strong prompting that Muriel should marry Wallace before he shipped out to war. Muriel agreed, Wallace agreed and they were soon married in Ogden, Utah at the home of Wallace’s Aunt Kate. They enjoyed a few scattered days together then they were separated for 40 months. Most of Wallace’s service was spent in the 813th Tank Destroyer Battalion, with time in North Africa, Sicily, France, Belgium, Germany, and Austria. Wallace later realized that his marriage led to a sense of being responsible for more than his own life which prompted him to enter Officer Candidate School, and this, and a number of other spiritual promptings and circ*mstances helped preserve his life through the war.
After his safe return in 1945, Muriel and Wallace were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple and began their own family, raising five boys and one girl, starting in a small home in Salt Lake City -and as their family grew - moving to the house in Bountiful where they lived for most of the rest of their lives. In 1972 work did take them to Kansas City, Missouri from there they retired in 1979 and returned to their much-loved Bountiful house. Family life included gardening and canning, family play and vacations, instilling a love of activity in the church to their children, and of reading and learning. Muriel taught by example. She enjoyed regular camping trips and sightseeing and vacations to visit her siblings and her children’s families.
After, the youngest child, Blake, entered school, Muriel returned to BYU where she obtained her bachelor’s degree and began teaching, first as a substitute, and then full time for many years at Meadowbrook Elementary in Bountiful, UT, then at Truman Elementary school in Kansas City, MO.
Muriel and Wallace loved to travel. Together they went to Iceland, Denmark and Norway; Egypt and Israel; New Zealand and Tahiti; Central America; and Canada as well as many places in the United States like Goblin Valley and the Grand Canyon. They had season tickets for the Hale Theater for years and they loved watching a wide range of plays.
Muriel regularly did her visiting teaching. She was an active member of DUP (Daughters of the Utah Pioneers). She taught their lessons. Muriel read the newspaper cover to cover, and books (her favorites were biographies), and scriptures. Into her hundreds, she continued to cook and clean, and enjoy serving and visiting her family. She wrote letters, then e-mails, to family and she sent thousands of birthday cards to her ever-expanding family.
Her heart was huge. She loved people. She was truly interested in their lives, so she remembered names and relationships. She remembered where people lived and what they were doing. Even to the end, during conversations, she would touch on what was going on in the lives of everyone she knew. She kept a display of the flags of the many nations where her children and grandchildren served missions and showed that even a girl from a tiny town in central Utah could grow to have an influence for good that spread around the world. We shall miss her.
The family wants to thank all the nurses, doctors and aides who helped during her last year. Your help maintained the quality of her life until she left us. Thank you!
To order memorial trees or send flowers to the family in memory of Muriel Mae Mortensen Christensen, please visit our flower store.
