Marvin Dee Loflin October 13, 1935 - August 3, 2023

It is with great love that we announce the passing of our beloved father, grandfather, husband, and cherished friend and mentor Marvin Dee Loflin.  He left this world and the pain of his 87-year-old body behind on August 3, 2023 at the Payson Hospital, surrounded by his family.  It may be of interest that he died in Payson, Utah, a town his great-grandfather Pardon Knapp Webb helped settle in the Spring of 1851—where he built a sawmill up Goosenest Road.

Marv was born in Calexico, California, just a stone’s throw from the Mexican border, on October 13, 1935 to Viola May Passey and Ira Dee Loflin, Jr.  He joked that just a half-mile south and he would have spoken Spanish, although in reality he never even lived there.  He grew up in Mesa, Arizona, where that same great-grandfather had moved to from Payson and also was instrumental in settling.

He had a sweet, loving mother, Viola, and was close to his grandparents, Frederick Passey and Leona Webb Passey—in whose home he spent a lot of time as a child while his mother worked to provide for him and his brothers.  He had a brother Larry, five years his junior, and a brother Charlie, 10 years his junior.  The tumultuous nature of his parents’ relationship and his father’s lack of presence in their home put Marv in a position of leadership in his family at a very young age.  He was almost 16 when his sister, Leona, was born.  Throughout his life he demonstrated great love and responsibility towards his brothers and sister, and their children, whom he welcomed into his home and his heart, and to whom he provided guidance, support, and tender regard.

Marv attended Mesa High School, where he was not only a cheerleader but Pep Assembly Chairman, a member of Quill and Scroll (High Honor Society), editor of the school paper (The Jackrabbit), producer of a radio program called The Mesa Highlights, Business Manager of the Yearbook (the Superstition), and a member of Masque & Dagger (drama) and Step & Swing (dance).  This drive and ambition continued throughout his incredible life.  However, his being fully engaged in high school didn’t stop him from packing his bags and hitting the road to run away and join the Navy when he was only 15 years old.  Fortunately, his aunt saw him walking down the highway and picked him up.  And he graduated from Mesa High School in 1953.

The day after graduation, he successfully joined the Army and left Mesa for basic training.  It was in the Army that his natural talent and propensity for languages was discovered, and instead of being sent to Korea, he was assigned to Army Language School at the Presidio in Monterrey, California where he learned Russian, and was then assigned to Austria and crossed the Alps in the back of an Army truck to Vicenza, Italy for the remainder of his military service.  He spent two years, nine months, and nine days in the Army; his opinion of his time there evident in the fact that he could tell you to the hour just how long his service was.  However, in addition to uncovering his love of not just languages, but language itself, the GI Bill paid for his education, and he was the first in his family to pursue higher education.  But not before going on a mission.

Marv served an LDS Mission in Finland from June 1956-December 1958.  On his mission and throughout his life, he developed remarkable friendships—friends who would remain close confidantes for the rest of his life—dear friends like Keyte, Burt, Jerry, and Mel who he served with, some of whose children played together, and with whom he would later work.  But when Marv arrived in Finland, his first companion had one foot out the door already and told Marv that he was on his own to learn the language and anything else.  And boy, did he!  Marv not only used his natural talent to tackle the Finnish language, but spent his mission traveling throughout the country teaching other missionaries, and creating a program for teaching the language.  He rode 75,000 miles, three times around the world, on Finnish trains.  He served in the Mission Presidency while in Finland.  He has a handwritten note from David O. McKay giving him special access to the upper rooms of the Salt Lake Temple, where he helped to translate the temple ceremony into Finnish.  (It was often pointed out that Finnish was a difficult language.  Mom would always say, “even Finnish idiots speak Finnish,” and Dad would say “Thanks, Honey.”)  He was so important to his mission that they asked him to extend, which he did not.  He was ready to move on to the next chapter of his life.  Although he did take that experience and wrote a series of lengthy and detailed letters to the church leaders in Salt Lake with his ideas for a language training center.  Very soon thereafter, the precursor to the MTC was born.

He came home in time for Christmas of 1958 to Mesa and his mother, and then left for Brigham Young University in Provo for the Winter Semester.  One of his classes was Freshman English.  There was a tall, beautiful brunette in that class from Redlands, California. Heated discussions would often involve the two of them, where the Redlands girl thought, “that guy thinks he is so smart.”  Then she found herself starting to agree with him.  He must have thought she was pretty smart too, because he asked her on a date.  She wasn’t so sure…as a tall girl, she was very self-conscious of her height, and she was taller than he was!  But by then she was already intrigued, and so to Bell, Book and Candle they went on Valentine’s Day.  It was only maybe a week later that he told a young JoJean Hansen, “You are the choicest thing I’ve found.”  To which she replied, “you mean since you’ve been home from your mission?”  And he answered, “in my whole life.” He went on to ask her, “Do you want to set up housekeeping?”  She did.

They skipped a day of classes and drove to Mesa for a weekend wedding on May 9, 1959, where they were married by a Justice of the Peace wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, attended only by Marv’s mother and grandmother.  But they were back in class on Monday morning.  Before the year was finished, they would welcome their first child, a son, Michael David Loflin.

Marv tackled college with the same fervor that he had high school.  With the help of the GI Bill and a Hinckley Scholarship (not to mention three part-time jobs), and fueled by his drive and intellect, he got his Bachelor’s in Political Science and his Master’s in English Language and Literature between January of 1959 and June of 1962 (both degrees in 3 and ½ years).  JoJean finished her bachelor’s degree at the same time.  They spent the summer apart, Marv at the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Norman, Oklahoma and JoJean with Marv’s mother in Arizona.  They moved to Bloomington, Indiana where he pursued his love of language, as he’d been accepted into the PhD program at Indiana University having been awarded a National Defense Fellowship to study Quechua.  It was here that he added two more children, both girls:  Maren (Dunn) and Celeste (Royal) and began working on his doctorate in Linguistics, which he would receive in 1965 with High Honors. His PhD mentor, Andreas Koutsoudas remained a dear friend, whom he even named a child for. It was also during this time, in the early 1960s, that he first brought home brochures on homesteading in Alaska—which had barely received statehood.

After earning his doctorate, Marv was recruited by the CIA and relocated his family to Alexandria, Virginia, to begin his training. He worked there, studying Russian; he was on the Finnish desk and the Peruvian desk.  He began learning the ropes to be a legit spy.  He really hated it.  When asked why, he said that it required him to be “duplicitous” and he had no interest in cultivating an ability to lie.  But he made great friends and found the training extremely valuable.

He moved his young family to take his first job as a linguistics professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia.  Turns out he was more interested in theory than application.  And two more daughters were born:  Gwendolyn May (Kaiser) and Andrea (Anaya).  He served in a district presidency and was asked to serve in a Stake Presidency while in Missouri.  He had written a lot about Black American English, arguing that it fit all the criteria to be its own language, and was concerned with the stance the LDS church had on the Priesthood not being extended to all races.  He declined the Stake Presidency position and spent time speaking with then-apostle Spencer W. Kimball about his thoughts and ideas.  It was 1970.  President Kimball set him apart as a High Priest.

He had the opportunity to become an Associate Dean of Arts & Letters at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and bought his family a little farmhouse on 5 acres in Mequon.  After four daughters in a row, he and JoJean were thrilled to welcome a son to their family, Cameron Dee Loflin in 1972.  While their family loved Mequon and Marv loved his job, he wasn’t convinced that career mobility would be a possibility, and he accepted a position as Dean of Arts & Letters at UNLV and the family moved to Las Vegas in 1975.  Neither the job nor the culture of Las Vegas appealed much to Marv and JoJean, and he put in his name for consideration at the University of Alaska, Anchorage.  And while their kids weren’t keen to move away from their friends and JoJean considered it a longshot, the offer came.

Marv had heard the call of the Last Frontier before, and this time he couldn’t resist its pull.  He moved his wife and six children to Eagle River, Alaska, in 1977 and took the position of Dean of Arts & Sciences at UAA.  And although this Arizona-raised man wondered what he was doing so far North when he was digging cars out of the snow, Alaska got under his skin, into his bones, and he loved it.  Not long after moving there, he was again put in the bishopric, and soon afterward he woke up in the middle of the night, telling JoJean of a feeling of certainty he had that he would be called as Bishop.  And so he was. Love is often forged and deepened through hardship and in early 1978, their oldest daughter was stricken with pneumonia.  Doctors gave them little hope for her recovery.  Their ward members rallied around this new, young family.  They took their kids to school, brought in dinners (and birthday cakes), and never, not for one night, left JoJean alone in the hospital, sitting with her all night to keep her company. She made a miraculous and full recovery.  He continued to enjoy deep and beautiful friendships that followed him throughout his life.  Bern, Mike, Boyd, John, Bill, and Kerry, to name a few.

His children grew and graduated from high school, and his influence was felt by many of their friends, boyfriends, ward members, and beyond.  He facilitated a merger with Anchorage Community College, served as interim Vice Chancellor and left his legacy deep in the academic community of Alaska, before taking a position as Dean of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Colorado, Denver, where his professional reach became national and then global.  He was at the forefront of online education, established sister relationships with universities in Moscow, China, Mongolia, Japan, and Nepal.  Throughout his remarkable career, beautiful friendships that knew no barriers, such as Svetlana and Kevin, Sharon and Ron, Steve, Roberta and Bill were cultivated and deeply treasured by Marv.

Eventually he retired from public academic life in 1999, and took a position as Chief Academic Officer at Career Step to work with his family and live in Salem Utah.  He helped to grow Career Step to a multi-million dollar company, partnering with more than 130 colleges.  He extended his reach through private enterprise, and forged more friendships: Ronda, Scott, Colt and Terri. And his adventurous spirit continued, when he and JoJean purchased 16 acres in Peterson Bay, Alaska.  They learned to navigate the ocean and tides with their own small navy, splitting time with their family in Utah and their wilderness home in Alaska.

In the Spring of 2021 through Ancestry DNA, we found Gayle Standage, a son born in 1952 that he didn’t know he had. What a joy to meet this man who is so like his father in temperament, humor, and taste, and his beautiful children.  Marv was taken in by the kinship, the love, and the family that has blessed all of us since its discovery.

Anyone who knew Marv knows that he kept his family close, loved words and photography, had a keen and joyful sense of humor, was adventurous to a capacity that surprised even himself, honored his commitments, his covenants, and loved his friends.   He was as reliable as the sun, providing love, humor, support, advice and a constant, consistent example to everyone who knew him.  To quote his eldest son, he leaves a giant, Marvin-sized hole that would be impossible to fill.  He was kind, forgiving, competent.  High praise in his book.  He learned to think for himself.  Was funnier than a rubber crutch.  And never stopped trying to discover the answers to the questions: what does it mean? and how do you know?

Oh, how we will miss his humor! And the sparkle in his eye!  No pun will ever be said (or thought of), that we don’t think of Marv.  But if a frog didn’t have a tail, it wouldn’t bump when he hopped.  And that’s just the way the pickle squirts.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Viola May Ray and Ira Dee Loflin, Jr., his brothers Larry Loflin and Charles Loflin, his sister Leona Ann Dyar, and his grandson Jason (Amanda) Standage.  He is survived by his wife JoJean Hansen Loflin, his son Gayle Standage and his children Marcy, Dawn, and Bridget; his son Michael David (Tamara) Loflin and their daughter Jessica; his daughter Maren (Chris) Dunn and their children Ryan (Missy) Dunn, Caitlin (Creighton) Petty, Colin, Tanner, Ethan (Cassie) Dunn, Tamsen (Austen) Dunn-McNulty, Raili (Kosner) Lewis and Jarrett (Gracie) Dunn; his daughter Celeste Royal and her children Kyle (Sabrina) Royal, Nathan (Maria) Royal, and Shannon Dee; his daughter Gwen (Joe) Kaiser and their children Veda (Alan) Weinert, Evan (Taylor) Kaiser, Taieno (Brandon) Cook, Jory (Emily) Kaiser, Rhys (Tess) Kaiser, Damaris (Tyler) Kaiser, Tristan Dee, and Michaiah; his daughter Andrea (Gene) Anaya, and their children Shirsten (Keith) Shirts, Kailea, Kaelys, and Daniel; his son Cameron Dee (Lauri) Loflin and their children Mitchel Dee (Hannah) Loflin, Denali, Kiana, and Saige and his great-grandchildren Dominic Standage, Aurora Standage, Trinity Standage, Lucy Homstad, August Homstad, Jude Homstad, and Casey Homstad, Miles Dunn, Macy Dunn, William Dunn, Ashton Petty, Sienna Petty, Duane Dunn, Georgia Dunn, Wendy Dunn, Calvin Dunn, Joseph Royal, Lillian Dee Royal, Daphne Royal, Sylvie Weinert, Elijah Weinert, Caleb Weinert, Micah Marvin Weinert, Soren Kaiser, Rosalia Cook, Gwendolyn Cook, Piper Kaiser, Lucy Shirts, Stella Shirts, and Vivian Shirts.

There will be a viewing on Wednesday, August 16, 2023 from 6:30-8:30 pm at Walker Funeral Home in Spanish Fork, and Thursday, August 17, 2023 from 9:45-10:45 am at the Salem West Stake Center in Salem, Utah.  The funeral will be at 11:00 am at the Salem West Stake Center, following which will be interment at Salem City Cemetery.