Stanley Udell Smith

Stanley Udell Smith was born in Cedar City to Grace Ashton Jones and Stanley Abner Smith, the last of four sons (Ashton, Gordon, Drex, then Stanley), but followed by two sisters (Anna and Grace Marie). He was raised in the small farming community of Enoch, but learned to love art and letters at the Branch Agricultural College where he played on the basketball team and helped produce the year book. It was there that he adopted the nickname of Khay after his love of the author of the Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam.
After high school, he was drafted for a short stint in the Army at the end of WW-II. He was disqualified from active service due to an unknit fractured knee (youthful injury), so served in the office, which is ironic since he had recently won the high-jump completion at the state-wide high school track and field meet. Afterward, he served a full-time LDS mission in the Northwestern States which is where he began to develop his deep love and study of the Book of Mormon.
He married his sweetheart, Avis Palmer, in the St. George Utah temple on April 18th, 1951 and transferred to the University of Utah to pursue a degree in Architecture. Always a free thinker, his ideas in architecture did not mesh well with those of the professors, and with a growing family, he began to work in housing construction designing and building his own house in Bountiful, the home where he died.
The engineering background served him well as he advanced in his career from home construction to managing the maintenance shop for the LDS church, to accepting chapel construction assignments for the church in the British Isles and in Samoa and Tonga, where he eventually became area supervisor.
Upon returning to the States, he began working for Lagoon just as Pioneer Village was being added. This led to learning how to either reconstruct or build stage coaches and carriages. His creativity and resourcefulness was greatly valued and he continued working for the owners of Lagoon well into his 70s.
After Avis’s passing in 2008, Udell’s health began to decline following a fall from a bicycle. He passed peacefully this past Sunday, having been under the watchful home-care of his daughter Cynthia for several years. He is survived by his oldest brother, Ashton (now 100!) and by his younger sisters, Anna Turner and Grace Marie Dennis as well as his four children: Cynthia Wright (Logan), Brent Udell (Yoriko), Jared Khay (Rebekah), Holly Irene Leonard (Tim), 12 grandchildren, and 28 great-grandchildren.
The funeral service will be held at Russon Mortuary, 295 N. Main Bountiful, UT at 2:00 pm on Sat. January 2nd with a viewing from 1:00 to 1:45 that same day. Interment will be at the Bountiful City Cemetery. Online guest book at www.russonmortuary.com.