Carolyn Cederleaf Orthner

Carolyn never took “No” for an answer. Not from the 1960s and 1970s, when the world had firm opinions about what a woman pursuing a doctorate in molecular biology ought to be doing instead. Not from a mother who did not approve of “The Austrian.” Not from the police officers who pulled over her Acura, whose speeding tickets and stop-sign tickets she regarded as opening offers. Not from her children, Rea and Mike, and certainly not from her grandchildren, Eva, Max, and Jackson. Not from grief. For two long, defiant years, not even from cancer. She went where she wanted to go, did what she wanted to do, and laughed loudly the whole way there. She was, in roughly equal measure, brilliant, stubborn, and a great deal of fun, and she never saw any reason those three should be in conflict. She lived a beautiful life on her terms.

She was born in Orchard Lake, Michigan, on March 24, 1947, to Bertil Cederleaf and Lucille Alesi. Swedish on one side and Italian on the other, it was a pairing that left Carolyn with Scandinavian reserve and a Sicilian capacity for fiery opinions. She grew up fast on a pair of water skis on Cass Lake, serious about her books at Marian High School (Class of 1965) and Oakland University (Class of 1968), and thoroughly unserious in the company of her younger sister, Marsha. In graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, Carolyn made a habit of being underestimated. In a physical chemistry class, “The Austrian” (Helmuth Orthner, Helly to everyone) kept scooting his seat closer to the woman who never appeared to take notes, on the theory that she must be brilliant. He was right. By the end of the term there was physical chemistry all right, just not the type learned in class. They married in 1970. Two doctorates followed in short order, his in 1973 and hers in 1974, in a decade when very few women were earning them. She never offered it up as an accolade or accomplishment.

They built their life in the Washington, D.C. area, and each of them, in a different capacity, went on to make an impact in the world. Helly helped found what became the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). Carolyn led research and development teams at the National Research Laboratories of the American Red Cross, spending twenty years on the proteins that govern how blood clots: proteomics, before the field had a name. She purified the protein C activator out of the venom of the southern copperhead snake and patented it for the Red Cross. Along the way she mentored dozens of younger scientists, and she would likely be faintly annoyed to see all of this listed in one place. Between two demanding careers, constant travel, and a daughter and a son, the household ran like a beautiful, barely controlled whirlwind. Carolyn had been told, as women of her generation were, that she would eventually have to choose. She declined. She never let go of what drove her work: an insatiable, infectious curiosity that everyone around her eventually caught.

In the early 1990s, Carolyn and Helly came to the University of Utah and fell hard for the mountains: the skiing, the hiking, the outdoors, the whole improbable abundance of the place. It was not a cautious love. On one mushroom-hunting expedition the two of them got turned around in the mountains, spent the night without camping gear, and were woken at dawn by a moose standing over them. Carolyn considered this a good trip. A later ten-year stint in Alabama did not change her mind about Utah; they kept the house in Cottonwood Heights the entire time. Helly retired on the first day of 2009 and they came home for good, with a long list of travels, trails, and ski days ahead of them. He died suddenly ten weeks later.

What she did next is the clearest picture of her that anyone could ask for. She grieved, and then she refused to let grief have the last word. She sat down at the piano, taught herself to play, and did not stop until she could play Clair de Lune the way it deserved to be played: properly, the way she did everything. She sang with the American West Symphony & Chorus of Sandy and helped hold it together behind the scenes. She read hard books and argued about them cheerfully. She gardened. She joined the Utah Mushroom Society and spent her weekends in the woods looking closely at things the rest of us simply walked past. She traveled with her children whenever they would have her, which was always. To Eva, Max, and Jackson she was Mimi, and Mimi’s house was where you learned to read and to make art. She laughed easily, often, and usually at something one of us had done. She kept an enormous circle of family and friends close, with a persistence that, in hindsight, looks a great deal like love.

She was diagnosed with metastatic renal cell carcinoma in May 2024 and met it the way she met everything: head-on, without a single complaint, and with a grace that was, frankly, a little intimidating. She kept her humor. She stayed herself until the end, which came in the early hours of September 4, 2026, with her children by her side.

Complaining had never been among her tools; she preferred action. When her children stood around discussing something instead of doing it (or, worse, complaining about it), she had a phrase, inherited from her Italian grandfather Alesi: “Talka, Talka, Talka.” It meant: Enough. Go. Do. It was the most durable thing she taught Rea and Mike: to act, and to live with that same ferocity, for themselves and their families. She never explained it. She just did it, every day.

Carolyn is survived by her daughter, Andrea Orthner Wrobel (Jeffrey); her son, Michael Orthner (Shea); her grandchildren, Eva, Max, and Jackson; her sister, Marsha Cote; and the many cousins, nieces, nephews, and friends who were fortunate to be hers. She was preceded in death by her husband, Helmuth Orthner (March 16, 2009), and by her parents, Bertil B. Cederleaf (July 31, 2006) and Lucille Alesi Cederleaf (January 24, 2002).

If you would like to honor Carolyn, do it the way she would have: learn something difficult in life, take the hard thing head-on, and sing where people can hear you. The next time you catch yourself talking about something instead of doing it, you will hear her.

“Talka, Talka, Talka.”

Service Information

A Viewing and Celebration of Life will be held on Friday, October 16, 2026 from 6:00 – 8:00 PM at Starks Funeral Parlor, 3651 South 900 East. Guests are encouraged to use the parking and entrance on the north side of the building. A funeral service will held on Saturday, October 17, 2026 at 11:00 AM, also at Starks Funeral Parlor, where friends and family may view and visit an hour prior at 10:00 AM.  Burial will follow at Salt Lake City Cemetery, 200 N St E, Salt Lake City, UT.

Online condolences may be offered at starksfuneral.com. Memorial donations in Carolyn’s honor may be made to the American West Symphony & Chorus or the Utah Mushroom Society.