Stanford Kent Evans' Obituary
Stanford Kent Evans died January 19, 2024 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was born June 30, 1939 to Carvel Swift Evans and Leone Haslam Evans at the LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City. His life spanned many eras. He knew pioneers, saw his father in World War II, and worked in the cutting edge of nuclear science. He loved his great grandfather, Hans Peter Larsen, a new convert to the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who emigrated to Utah from Nokskov Denmark and lived to be 98.
One of his earliest memories was that his Dad was gone to serve in World War II from 1943 to 1946, as the commander of two large hospital ships, which means Kent didn’t see him for three years. When he returned home, young Kent was just finishing first grade. He said, “I remember seeing my Dad for the first time after the war when he walked into our living room, still wearing his army uniform. He seemed tall and regal at that time.” Kent didn’t say if he knew at first who his father was.
While still a fairly young child, Kent desired a career in some scientific endeavor. He loved astronomy and spent many hours learning where the major constellations were and the working of the observable parts of the solar system. “As I grew older,” he said, “I realized that a career as an astronomer would involve much loneliness and difficult living conditions at a remote observatory.” Still, while boys his age had sports or entertainment heroes, Kent’s heroes were Isaac Newton, Galileo, and Albert Einstein. By the time he was thirteen or fourteen he had made up his mind to become a physicist. This was a bit unusual as his father and two older brothers were in medicine. Yet Kent’s mind explored the depths and heights of the physical universe.
He also grew up surrounded by classical music. His father, who loved it too, had a large classical collection and listened to it before he went to work each day. Thus, classical music became embedded in his heart and soul, and he knew his favorite pieces so intimately that he could have led them as a conductor.
It was this love of music that led him to play the viola in junior high, and then the clarinet, as well as the saxophone, in East High School’s dance band. This love of music had a high impact in his life because it not only led him to the high-stepping University of Utah marching band, but to a pretty, freshman flutist named Rosemary Jensen. Once each year the band got to travel with the football team, and this year it was to San Francisco, where Kent said, “I finally got up the nerve to ask her for a date.” The night before the game they took a cable car to eat at Fisherman’s Wharf and then headed back by a hotel on Nob Hill, where they stopped and looked at their reflections in a window. Kent said, “A very distinct impression came over me that this girl was special--really, really special. I think we both realized that we were meant to be together.” They dated for four years before they were married in the Logan Temple, September 27, 1962.
After his college graduation, Kent became a 2nd Lt. in the Army and was sent to the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. Upon his return, he was ready to start a Ph.D program, but the young man who had majored in physics, and wanted to be a physicist since he was 13, now slightly changed his direction. An advanced degree in physics would take seven years, while doing that same degree in a slightly different field, ceramic engineering, with grant money thrown in, would only take three.
Rosemary taught elementary school, while Kent got his Ph.D, and then they were off to northern California and a new job at the General Electric Vallecitos Nuclear Center, where they lived in Pleasanton and Kent served in the bishopric. Kent worked in the plutonium fuels facility.
Life was so good, except their hearts yearned for a baby to fill the empty crib. Their deepest yearnings were fulfilled when they were able to receive their beautiful baby girl who they named Jennifer, who was like sunshine. She was followed by a brother, named after his father, David Kent, and finally a dark-haired sweetheart named Catherine.
After a 7-year wait for children, fatherhood became Kent’s important calling, and he loved their children with patience, compassion, and kindness, as he had always adored their mother.
In 1974, Kent followed his manager to a new job working on a Breeder Reactor Development and the family moved to Mountain View, but after working for ten years in the nuclear power industry, it became clear that progress in this area became increasingly difficult because of opposition.
Kent said, “I could see the Lord again intervening in my life” as I was invited to work in the research department, looking at alternate forms of energy, at Utah Power and Light in Salt Lake City. The move back to Salt Lake was especially motivated by the declining health of Rosemary’s father, Joel P. Jensen, and the two years they spent close to him before his death were especially precious to Kent.
He is the grandfather of five, Taylor Evans Linebaugh, Halle Evans, Chase Little, Collin Little and Tristynn Close. One grandson wrote a paper about his grandfather that read like this: “So you have heard about superman and spider man, but they are nothing compared to a real hero such as my loving grandpa, Kent Evans.”
Kent was an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
One of the great heartbreaks of his life was losing his daughter, Jennifer, to cancer in 2016.
Kent was outstanding at his work, an adoring husband, father and grandfather, and had a calm, immovable light inside of him that made him an exemplar throughout his life and during his most trying illness. Anyone who knew him, understood that he was never angry, that he laughed heartily, and that he would sacrifice anything to help another. His foundation was firm, and ran deep, and his kindness never tired.
Kent summed up his life: “In my own personal journey, I am reminded how the hand of the Lord was revealed in things which happened. I didn’t recognize that hand at those times of change, but as I have grown older the sense of it all becomes clear.”
He is survived by his wife Rosemary, his children David Kent Evans and Catherine Evans Little, and his five grandchildren. Funeral services will be Saturday, January 27, 2024, with a viewing from 9:30 to 10:30 and the funeral at 11:00. It will be held at the Latter-day Saint Little Cottonwood Stake Center at 1160 E. Vine Street, Murray, Utah 84121.
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