Sept. 18, 1935-Oct. 7, 2023
Myrna Gaye Barton Bateman, 88, died the morning of Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. She was born Sept. 18, 1935, in Cedar City, Utah, to Alma Ross Barton and Wilhelmina Alice Cannon. She married Russell Rulon Bateman on March 20, 1954, in the Saint George LDS temple.
Gaye grew up surrounded by the legacy of Utah and Saint George pioneers, a direct Cannon descendant of the first to set foot in Saint George to colonize it and grow cotton. All of her ancestral families from Mann (Cannon), England (Lund), Denmark (Nielsen), Australia (Gingell), Illinois (Barton), Delaware (Mousley) and New York (Mason) converged on Nauvoo, then southern Utah as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in firm belief of the gospel of their Lord and Savior.
Russ and Gaye lived for years in southern California where her first three children were born. A fourth came later after the family was uprooted from San Diego to Saint George to Littleton, Colorado, and then to Salt Lake City.
Gaye was an avid and eclectic artist ultimately earning a BA from Weber State College the years the family lived in Bountiful, Utah. She painted, did photography, ceramics, made clothing and crafts. She was also bullish on education and cultural literacy presenting her children at their kindergarten year fully able to read and write with Dick and Jane already under their belt along with Homer, Virgil and all the world’s mythological stories. Every child was also introduced to music and allowed to choose an instrument. When it came time, she dug in and helped her children conquer math from long division to fractions. Later, she would teach art at Murray High School and then elementary school in Monroe, Utah.
She knew all the stories by heart and repeated them to the children at her knee — the ministry of Jesus in Galilee, the pioneer trek, the settling of southern Utah — until they knew them by heart too.
A hard-bitten pioneer who remembered her ancestors’ times as if she had lived them, she insisted on every one of her children learning how to cook, sew, grow up in the realities of canning what grew on the backyard trees as well as learn the joy, decoration and cuisine of holiday celebrations year-round. What Gaye did not like was peanut butter and she was happy to give any child a pass from being forced to consume the national PB&J. She loved and baked cookies, cakes and candies of all sorts. These are remembered as pleasant distractions from the rather modest household circumstances.
Later, Gaye and Russ retired to their hometown Saint George, where they served several years as missionaries for the Church history sites in southwest Utah and many years as workers in the temple. They would become expatriates and live in Orem where they’d celebrate their 69th anniversary.
She is survived by her husband, four children Russell Jr. (Julene), Randy (Cheryl Jean), Nedra (Alan) and Nesya (David), numerous grandchildren, great-grandchildren, one great-great-grandchild and two sisters-in-law Lucy Palsgrove and Evelyn Barton.
Interment will be in the Saint George City Cemetery on Wednesday, Oct. 18, at 11 a.m. with arrangements under the care of Metcalf Mortuary.
A Memorial Service will be held on Saturday, Oct. 21, at 11 a.m. at 762 East 1200 North, Orem, Utah.
Arrangements are under the care of Metcalf Mortuary, (435) 673-4221. Visit the Metcalf Mortuary website for condolences, complete obituary and funeral listings.