Ethel Annette Riley

Our mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, Ethel Annette Riley, passed away peacefully the evening of February 23, 2025. She was an amazing woman and we all cherish the time we shared with her and the example she set for us. She was born in Overland, Missouri, on February 20, 1939, to Aubrey Louis Young and Mary Marjorie Lovelace. 

Ethel was an independent soul from a very early age. When she met our father, Myrne, at the age of 18, she was already living independently and supporting herself at a well-known 5 and dime store called Woolworth’s.

She was very talented and very frugal. She would sew her own clothes, prom dresses for her daughters and clothes for other children. She was always on the prowl for good deals with clothes for herself and her family. Many of her children benefited from her stylish but frugal shopping for clothes. Ethel liked to dress stylishly and wore beautiful dresses when living in Malaysia. When she started wearing Jordache jeans, Dad loved them so much that he finally relented and allowed his daughter Laura to wear jeans!

In University city while her husband Myrne was working on his engineering degrees at Washington University, Ethel had a great friend named Carol Goldstein. They enjoyed eating Fritos, drinking Dr Pepper and watching their favorite TV shows. 

Ethel had an incredible work ethic. The members of her ward (i.e. church congregation) fondly comment, “Work like Ethel” when they are encouraging others to work hard. She was brought up by a father who put in a half-acre garden every year in his spare time from working at McDonnel Douglas in St Louis. Ethel took the children to pick strawberries, blueberries, cucumbers, butter beans, watermelons, and many other types of produce from pick your own farms. In hot muggy Missouri summers, she would pick gallons of wild blackberries. She would dress the children in long pants, long sleeved shirts, boots and socks. After a generous dose of insect repellant, the children would wade out into the 8 ft tall Blackberry bushes. She loved to work in her garden in her Bountiful home and can grape juice, apricot jam and Mexican salsa from the garden tomatoes. Even when the children were adults, they loved to take a bottle of grape juice, jam and salsa back to their own homes. Mom loved the flowers, decorative trees, and bushes in the yard in their final home in Bountiful. Grandchildren remember with fondness that Mom would always give a report about the weather and the garden!!! 

Ethel was a great cook. She kept the children well provisioned. Lots of favorite recipes are still passed among the siblings. She was also well known for her famous cinnamon and dinner rolls. A treasured family recipe.

Her son, Eric, remembers a lot of Sunday dinners that featured roast beef, mashed potatoes and a whipped Jello concoction. Those are still some of his favorites. The children were not quite as fond of the rotating duties involved in the Sunday meal, namely peeling potatoes and cleaning the dishes afterwards especially the dishes for a family of eight. The easy duty was always setting the table.

Ethel was daring and would go on the Six Flags roller coasters with the children. Eric, distinctly remembers one time that her wig flew off and somebody behind her caught it. She would at times get out of the car at the grocery store, fling her purse over one arm and literally run from the car to the store. Why waste time walking? So embarrassing as a kid, haha.

Gwen, one of her grandchildren remembers Grandma Riley as spunky. She had the gusto and the stick-to-itiveness of 100 people. She was always determined to see through everything she did. Grandma Riley had a strength about her. She was a great example of courageously living the life she chose. She was fearless. The grandchildren loved visiting her and doing activities with her such as going to Dinosaur Park or Lagoon. She could talk endlessly about her garden and the weather. She would show us all of her cool collections of things carefully placed and always perfectly dusted. She was very organized and clean which was admired. She loved interesting things and different cultures from around the world. It was fun listening to her, she found ways to make seemingly mundane things sound more intriguing. She loved her family and loved having everyone around and was loved by them in return.

Ethel did so much work on the various homes that she and Myrne built or remodeled. Stripping, scraping, staining, painting in homes in Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia and beyond. In Utah, Mom had a couple of businesses and loved speaking to and working with her clients. She really enjoyed engaging with them and deemed them all as friends.

Ethel was also a brave, adventurous soul. When the children were young, her husband accepted a job sponsored by the US government to be a university educator at what was then called the University of Saigon in Vietnam. Her husband had to go over 3 months before the family due to the timing of the school year. Ethel got the house ready along with the five kids to fly to Hong Kong where they were supposed to meet their father. Which meant passports, and shots, renting the house, and all manner of preparations. The family flew to Honolulu where they spent the night. The next day the family took a 747 to fly to Hong Kong to meet their father. The only problem was, the plane developed engine trouble and had to land at Midway. They kept the family on the plane all night long. The family finally succeeded in taking off and landing in Hong Kong after 12 hours on the tarmac. They met their father at the Peninsula Hotel. Myrne definitely made Pan Am pay for another night in the hotel! 

While in Kuala Lumpur, Ethel was pretty much on her own with the children for 15 months. Myrne would only come from Vietnam and visit once per month. She got the children to the International School with a driver they hired and interacted with the grocery boys and the bread man who came by with their little van or bicycle. The youngest child at the time, Jeff, was a little baby at the time and she had to have him sleep in a travel trunk because we did not have a crib!

Economic realities made Myrne find jobs in different parts of the country. The family left Missouri and moved to North Carolina, then to Virginia and then eventually to Utah. 

While in Missouri, Ethel was very supportive of Tim’s and Eric’s scouting activities and later was a big support to her son Jeff in his scouting activities in Utah. She took her son Tim and his neighbor friend to the bush in the Ozarks of Missouri. They were going to work on a trail to earn the Forestry merit badge. She had to drive her Pontiac Star Chief Executive through multiple creeks that crossed the road. She drove that thing like a 4-wheel drive. She would gun it through the water and the car would stall out and then coast to the other side. Thinking back on it she was crazy to try it. All, so that her son could go work on his scouting project!

Ethel participated in a lot of service. She served in many callings at church. One that stands out was her years of work with 11-year-old scouts. She was great with the young men. She did a lot of ministering over the years, taking food and goodies, particularly her cinnamon rolls to neighbors in the community.

Another time she took her sons, Eric and Tim, on a 50-miler backpack trip. She was a brave mother to let two of her boys off on the side of the road and just leave them there in the middle of nowhere, trusting that we knew what to do, which was debatable, to get to the meet:00-up point with our father some 5 days later. 

She had the gift to believe. Ethel was a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When Tim went for his own endowment at the Washington DC temple, Ethel had gone couple days earlier. Tim remembers she was on a real spiritual high when he arrived. She had a great testimony of doing work for her ancestors.

Later in life, she made a goal to read the whole Bible in one year. She was super diligent at doing it. The children remember how excited, almost giddy, she was when she had accomplished that goal. It made a real difference to her. 

Her testimony of the Savior Jesus Christ, her work ethic, her spunkiness, her stylishness and her love for family will continue as a shining light and forever inspire us.

A Celebration of Life will be held at 10:00 a.m. Saturday, March 1, 2025, at the Russon Mortuary Chapel, 295 N. Main Street, Bountiful, Utah. An evening viewing will take place from 5:00-7:00 p.m. Friday, February 28, 2025, at the mortuary. A morning viewing will be held from 9:00-9:45 a.m. Saturday at the mortuary prior to services.

Services will be streamed live on the Russon Mortuary Live Facebook page and on this obituary page. The live stream will begin 10-15 minutes prior to services and will be posted below.