Barbara Jane Brown Knighten

Momma was born, Barbara Jane Brown, November 4th 1934. She was born in Duchesne, Utah at the home of a midwife in the area. It was north of the main highway. She is the daughter of Charles William Brown and Ora Fern Smith. She had a happy childhood, enjoying the life they lived. One evening when she was about 3 they noticed she was missing. They searched frantically everywhere for her hoping not to find her in the canal not far away. Pretty soon, here came the family cow, with Barbara bringing it. She had recognized it was time to bring the cow in for the night and did it.

That was the kind of lady mom was. If there was something needing done in the home or out, she saw that it got done. There were many a family who experienced the loss we just did that received a batch of her light as air sweet rolls and a jug of orange juice and milk the morning of the funeral, “So they won’t have to worry about breakfast today.” During one of her stints as Relief Society president a family was coming from Australia with what they could carry in their suitcases. She organized the sisters, got the house cleaned and stocked with as many of the things as people could share to give that family hope and a more comfortable home. The father later served as Bishop in the ward.

Mom’s father was on his third marriage. He was an itinerant painter during the depression, and traveled from Colorado to the Great Basin. He said the soil there was great for growing things and settled down. He married that little blonde-haired gal, as he wrote about grandma to his son, to keep her out of mischief. Mom had one older brother, Howard, from grandpa’s second marriage. She had 4 brothers and 4 sisters, and she was the oldest in their family. Edward only lived a few precious months. Gene lived a long life and only passed a while ago. Carl was lost because of diphtheria at age 8. He was taken to Salt Lake City to try and save him. Their dad promised to bring him home, but came back the next day on the mail truck because Carl had passed. Marta passed a while ago. Dear Aunt Blanch passed just this last September. Richard, the Valentine’s Day brother, lived a longer life because of a kidney transplant when he was 24. He lived with our family while he waited for a kidney and Momma learned to drive so she could take him the 40 miles three times a week for dialysis at the University of Utah Medical Center. Mom is survived by her sisters, Loretta and Lois.

During the summer when Richard was doing dialysis, we three kids would go along with them. After getting Richard settled with the staff, we would ride the bus down to the church office building that stood where the conference center is now. We kids would take turns pushing the elevator button that took us to the fourth floor where the genealogy records were kept. Mom saved her quarters, dimes, and nickels to make copies of the sheets that had our family on them. We searched the original family group sheets, and when they were all found, learned to use the micro fiche and micro film machines. Mom loved doing family history work. She loved her family and wanted to find them all. It took a little convincing to get her to allow us to start doing the temple work for them, though. The church had much stricter rules then than now. I remember vividly the times she and I did work for her grandmother and great grandmother. A mother and daughter doing the work for a mother and daughter. As well as the day she knelt as herself, and Lee and I were her mother and father, for her to be sealed to them was a sweet, sweet day. We also sealed her parents that day and her grandparents. Just another way she served whoever she could, when and where she could.

When her father passed, he charged her and Gene to watch over their younger brother and sisters. She took this charge very seriously. Each Christmas we chose presents for each of their families because we had more than they did. Mom grew a large garden for many years and saved that money for us to go out to visit family. Her strawberry patch and raspberry bramble provided many pies, jars of jam to eat, and money for sharing with others. We would have neighborhood kids come with a quarter, nickel or dime to buy cucumbers that spelled out their name, or fresh tomatoes that were eaten before they got home.

Mom scrimped and saved anyway she could so we kids could go on band or choir tours, scout and young women’s camps and the odd movie here and there. She loved us each dearly. She got us all through High School and BYU for David and I and Stevens Heniger Business College for Laurel. She got Laurel and I married off. She learned how to decorated cakes so she could do Laurel’s cake, and cussed at me because I didn’t give her enough time to get blue flowers growing in her garden for my reception.

Each summer she grew, bottled, froze, dried and served hundreds of pounds of produce. Her apricot, apple, and pear trees gave us refined palates that still can barely stomach store bought canned fruits and vegetables.

After mom graduated from Union High School, her father made arrangements for her to go to Steven Henigar school to get an accounting certificate. She lived with a family as a house helper in Salt Lake City. She cherished the sweet little yarn doll that the children gave her as a graduation gift. It was there she learned to love Bleu Cheese. The family had been given a large wheel of it, and it was served many times, and many ways until it was gone. Her certificate from the business college gave her the skills to be a teller at the bank in Vernal. She was working there when her landlord and Dad’s landlord schemed and introduced them. Dad had been trying to meet her, though. He would see her on the street and cross to try and meet her and she would use evasive maneuvers to get away. She finally agreed to date and then marry David John Knighten, or “that cowboy”, September 5th 1958. David Gail was born 9 months later on May 21st in Farmington, New Mexico; and Laurel Elaine was born on their 2nd anniversary, which was also Labor Day, in Kemmerer, Wyoming. (The doctor had a tee time he was missing and griped at mom, while smoking his stogie, to hurry up so he wouldn’t miss it.) They lived in Big Piney at the time. Because of that doctor, I was almost born on the highway going from Big Piney to Evanston, because mom would not go to that man again. I was born four years after Laurel and David. They blamed me for a lot of things, but I had no stauncher defender than David, and better friend than Laurel, once we all grew up.

I apologize for skipping around. Life is linear, but mom’s story is like a dandelion, her sworn enemy, and scattered in many directions. Because of Laurel and David, or maybe a better word could be with them, Mom and Dad have visited every state in the US including Alaska and Hawaii. They have been to England, Scotland and Wales, Mexico and Canada. From a not even piss poor (forgive my language, but it is a phrase that evokes destitution which is what mom grew up in) to a world traveler, Mom was quite a lady. She loved the church and her husband. She was devoted to both, even though the latter could exasperate her to no end.

Interestingly, mom and dad both started developing dementia about the same time, but it did not progress the same in them. She watched him and said, I will do this or won’t do that when I get that age. She was three years younger than dad. Sadly, she lost him during the covid farce, on Christmas night 2020. I had her mind for about a year after that, then after a couple of deaths and a wicked illness – not covid, her mind started slipping quickly into a different realm.

When I was 16 we were talking about life and different relatives that had to be in nursing facilities, and she asked me to promise her I would never put her in one. I made the promise that if it were in my power, she would never end up in one. I have kept that promise with the help of our family. I have read or was there for each of us kids patriarchal blessings. They all charged us with caring for mom and dad when they were old, and we did. David and Laurel gave them places to go, and things to do during retirement, and Laurel and I cared for them when they retired from retirement. She and dad both died in my home with family around them. It is hard to care for someone who cared for you, but does not know you as you anymore.

Momma was my example, my guide, my role model, my friend, my mother and my child. She died October 31,2025. May she and I finally rest, and may we all be blessed to see her again, happy, healthy and whole.

Graveside Services will be held Tuesday, November 4, 2025 at 12 Noon at the Avalon Cemetery.