Ten BYU emeritus alumni were honored March 14 with special recognition awards at the Emeritus Alumni Association annual luncheon program that included adding the class of 1958 to the group.
Those honored were Dwayne N. Andersen, Viva Skousen Bluth Brown, Ora Hamilton Burrup, Keith Bruce Campbell, Ross B. Denham, Gordon D. Hawkins, Elvon G. Jackson, Duane S. Mikkelsen, Eloise Jean Kohler Robins, and E. Widtsoe Shumway.
Andersen was serving an LDS mission in Hawaii the day Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941. After his mission, he served in the army infantry in the Battle of Okinawa, for which he was awarded two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. He has since served several LDS missions, including serving as a missionary and mission president in the Northern Far East Mission, as the first president of the Tokyo Temple, and as both a Church Educational System and temple missionary in Johannesburg, South Africa. He also organized the first training program for couples to serve as temple missionaries. He and his wife trained more than 650 senior missionaries in two years.
Brown was born and reared in the Mormon colonies in Mexico and paid her way through college by playing the piano. After studying physical education and music, she taught for 14 years in the Mesa, Ariz., School District, establishing band, orchestra, and choral programs in its elementary and junior high schools. She has served on stake and ward Relief Society boards and as a Primary president, a choir director, a temple worker, and a full-time missionary in Guatemala.
Burrup served for many years as a librarian at Wasatch Elementary in Provo, where she was an advocate for art and music. In honor of her late husband, a BYU professor of education, she established the Percy E. Burrup Scholarship at BYU for excellence in educational administration. She also coordinated the Provo Women’s Council program for international exchange students, serving a term as its president. Her Church callings have included stake Primary president, Relief Society president, temple worker, and full-time missionary to Nauvoo. She is known in her neighborhood as an “angel of mercy” and often organizes activities for the single adults and youth in her area.
Standing, left to right: Dwayne N. Andersen, Gordon D. Hawkins, Ross B. Denham, E. Widtsoe Shumway, Keith Bruce Campbell. Seated, left to right: Duane S. Mikkelsen, Eloise Jean Kohler Robins, Viva Skousen Bluth Brown, Ora Hamilton Burrup, Elvon G. Jackson.
Campbell is an agronomist and consultant who served as national manager of agronomy and advertising at Stauffer Chemical, chaired several soil and agronomy committees around the United States, and co-wrote The Western Fertilization Handbook, a publication used throughout the world. He has been involved in the Boy Scouts of America, Little League coaching, and university scholarship committees. In the Church, he has served as stake president, spoken at Church farm directors conferences, and volunteered on a special disaster survival committee under Ezra Taft Benson.
Denham spent a combined 30 years as a teacher, principal, and administrator in the Provo School District. His community service includes serving as a board member for the Provo Chamber of Commerce and the United Fund of Utah Valley, president of the Kiwanis Club, and chair of the Utah County March of Dimes. He has served missions in Minnesota and the New Zealand Temple and was on the open-house committee for the Timpanogos Temple. He is also a recipient of the Silver Beaver Award in Scouting.
Hawkins, a highly successful sales executive, is a popular speaker, best-selling author, horse owner and trainer, and boxer. While at BYU, he was student body president and coached a boxing class that included Dallin H. Oaks. Hawkins served in the Marine Corps, where he won the Armed Forces Boxing Championship, and was a major in the Civil Air Patrol. He has served in the presidencies of many organizations, including the Kiwanis Club, the Arthritis Foundation, and the Boy Scouts of America Executive Council.
Jackson, a physician, worked among Native Americans in Montana at the beginning of his career and spent 36 years as a member of the surgical staff at LDS Hospital. He was a diplomat of the National Board of Medical Examiners and American Board of Surgeons. He has served as BYU Emeritus Alumni Association president and has been on the BYU Alumni Association Board. He served a mission in Great Britain as a youth and another mission in the Laotian and Thai Branch of Salt Lake City with his wife, Mary Ellen.
Mikkelsen served as advisor to more than 100 MS and PhD candidates during his 39-year career as a professor of agronomy and range science at the University of California, Davis. Domestic and foreign governments hired him for his skills as an agronomist, a field that took him to the Philippines, Malaysia, Chile, Africa,Thailand, and other countries. He worked in the agricultural departments of the Rockefeller Foundation and Rice Technologies and published 250 research papers and 15 chapters in technical books.
Robins taught elementary school children for 35 years and has served many people throughout her life. Utah Teacher of the Year in 1977, she continues to volunteer as a reading tutor and school grandma. She completed a mission in the Northern Central States and has since served at the Missionary Training Center and the Provo Temple. Robins has often welcomed new neighbors with homemade bread and taxied the homebound to church, appointments, and the grocery store. For many years she has gathered and shipped clothes to Mexican villages.
Shumway was high school student body president and an All-State player in basketball and baseball in Phoenix before coming to BYU, where he also played basketball and baseball. He returned to Phoenix, became a high school teacher and coach, and eventually owned a cemetery and mortuary for 20 years. He served in the Boy Scouts of America for 26 years and was president of the Arizona Cemetery Association. A former president of both the Utah Salt Lake City North and Utah Ogden Missions, he also served as president of the Arizona Temple from 1994 to 1997.
