Memorial Day 2008

Decorating Lee Benson Valentine's grave at the Provo Cemetery.
The grave of Lee Benson Valentine, PhD
The grave of Americus Vespucci Greer, great great great, etc. grandfather.
Amy Melvina Young Valentine (92) has been a widow for nearly 41 years. Lee Valentine was and is the love of her life.

After Sunday dinner in Highland, we drove to the Provo City Cemetery in several cars to visit the grave of Lee Benson Valentine, Robert's father who died in an auto accident in 1967, three months after Robert and Shauna were married. Lee Valentine was a great singer and guitarist. He acted in many plays and musicals at BYU and was a kind and wise father. Born in 1911, Lee grew up on a farm in Brigham City, Utah, the only boy of Nephi James Valentine and Ottolina Bengston Valentine and had five older sisters (Grace, Wilma, Ruth, Erma and Thelma) who adored him. Lee met gorgeous Amy Melvina Young, his mission president's daughter, in Argentina in 1935 while serving a mission for the LDS Church. He taught Spanish at BYU and Stanford, where he earned a PhD in Latin American Area Studies in 1956.

We also visited the nearby grave of Americus Vespucci Greer who died in Provo in 1896. Americo was grandmother Amy's pioneer great grandfather, which would make him the great-great-great-great grandfather of Robert and Shauna's spunky grandkids, who seemed only mildly interested in this genealogy. By the way, Americus had a brother named Christopher Columbus Greer!

Imogen and Sydney did not quite understand that you are NOT supposed to climb on tombstones!