Marjorie Lee Hancey

Marjorie Lee Hancey died May 18, 2015, at 94. She was born February 28, 1921, in Hyrum, Utah, the middle of five children. They moved to Brigham City and were surrounded by a large extended family for the first years of her life, and for the first years of the Great Depression. Mom remembers trading eggs for candy at the co-op, growing and preserving most of their food, and never feeling deprived.

All of this changed when she turned 14 and her closest confidant, her father Eli, died suddenly. Her mother, Alice, returned to Utah State University to finish her degree in Home Economics, then moved the children to Fillmore, Utah, in order to work for the Farm Security Administration. Alice drove throughout Central Utah, teaching Depression-era families self-sufficiency in their farming and homemaking practices. This left Mom and her siblings to fend for themselves, teaching them self-sufficiency as well.

Marge graduated from Millard High then attended cosmetology school. She worked in salons at the Ambassador Hotel and the Hotel Utah. When she got homesick for her family, she pawned her watch on Friday to buy a train ticket to Fillmore for the weekend, then returned to earn back her watch the following week.

Mom met Jack Hancey through mutual friends and they married three months later.
They had a daughter, Karen, then when Jack went off to WWII Mom and Karen lived in Delta, Utah, with family. Marge remembers seeing Japanese prisoners brought into Delta from Topaz Internment Camp to make first aid kits with the local women. One day Karen was convulsing with high fever and one of the Japanese women stepped in, wrapped Karen up tightly in a blanket and held her until the convulsion subsided. It was eye-opening for Mom to witness this prisoner; this perceived "enemy" soothe her daughter. She never forgot it. Later during the war Marge worked at the Clearfield Navy Depot, and once again was moved by working alongside the German and Italian prisoners of war.

After the War Judy and Alan were born, followed by daughter, Kim. As soon as Kim started kindergarten Mom was out the door to work again. She held a number of jobs but the most long-lived was as a medical assistant at The Clearfield Clinic, where nearly everyone in town came to value her kindness.

Marge enjoyed gardening; she did not like housework. Her favorite pastime was to hop in the car and take off. She did this to escape, of course, but also out of a longing for something distant, something ineffable. We teased her about the time she chased the end of a rainbow and ended up half way to Fillmore. She traveled further afield too: Istanbul, Ephesus, Greece, Israel, France, and Italy.

She drove to the eagles on Willard Bay, to lunch at the Idle Isle in Brigham City, to the sunset on Antelope Island. She rode the Frontrunner from Clearfield to Salt Lake every Wednesday to eat at Caputo's, until she was 90. She loved classical music, a good cup of coffee, her grandkids, great-grandkids, her sons-in-laws Izzy and Hank, her cat Molly, and the ducklings on the canal where she walked daily until three weeks before her death. She taught us by example not to judge others, and not to exclude people based on perceived differences. She loved unequivocally without expecting anything in return.

Marjorie never liked the limelight; she did not want a funeral. She didn't want an obit either, but we couldn't resist.