Vivian "Viv" Croft Best
1936 - 2020
Early Life: Vivian was born October 20, 1936, in Provo, Utah, to Jacob Calvin and Lula McClellan Croft. Viv lived in Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada, while her father worked for the government. Her fondest memories, while growing up, were during the years of World War II when she lived in Cedar City, Utah. The nearby campus of the Branch Agricultural College (now Southern Utah University) and juniper-covered hills to the west, provided ample opportunities for youthful activities. Skipping her senior year at Granite High School in Salt Lake City, Vivian attended the University of Utah on a Ford Foundation scholarship for one year and then transferred to Brigham Young University for a year. She had a lifelong interest in medicine and biology but further academic pursuits were curtailed upon marriage and arrival of children.
Life's Work | Service | Interests: On March 16, 1956, Vivian married Myron Gene Best in the Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
While her children were growing up, Vivian taught by example, never lecturing. Life skills were learned by watching. Her daughter, Katrina, recalls: "I remember the summer before I started first grade. She asked me to draw pictures of the school clothes I wanted her to make me for that year. I tagged along to the fabric store to pick out what I wanted; never was it her that chose for me. We would then come home, clean off the kitchen table, and the drafting began–on paper towels, mind you, because tissue paper was too expensive. We had the paper towel patterns and to this day that's how I do mine!! She made my school wardrobe exactly to my drawings. This continued through my fourth grade year until I took over–unknowingly her apprentice, unnoticed I had learned what I needed to make my own patterns and sew my own clothes–I never once had a 'lesson'–just simply watching and doing it along side her. I don't recall her ever trying to change my mind of the fabric I picked even in the first grade."
Vivian's crowning achievement in her sewing room over the past several years was the production of a unique quilt for each of her children and 27 living grandchildren. Aided by her fellow sewers in a quilt group, she crafted unique and exquisite works of art. But the most memorable one was a baby quilt she helped her oldest daughter, Karen, undertake when she was 13, for her little brother, Richard. But the ravages of cancer precluded Karen's completion of the quilt, so with finishing touches supplied by two grandmothers, the quilt was finished. It was auctioned at the Festival of Trees and hung in the Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City for several years, before finding a place in the entry of the Arapaho home.
Much preferring stitchin' over the kitchen, Vivian's lifelong love and joy was sewing. It started with making her own wedding dress, followed by additional ones for daughters, a daughter-in-law, and granddaughters. There wasn't much that she could not make a pattern for, or alter, and sew to completion, including children's and men's clothes and chair covers.
Vivian liked to travel. Tours were enjoyed to Israel, Turkey, Greece, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, the Caribbean, Japan, Alaska, and Hawaii.
An insatiable and highly productive interest focused around doing things with her hands and solving problems. She accurately typed Myron's thesis in 1961, making three carbon copies, and a decade later, with equal accuracy, typed several drafts of his manuscript that was published as a 630-page textbook. She crocheted, tatted, carded and spun alpaca wool on her spinning wheel, knitting a warm sweater for herself. Dipping chocolates was mastered in Ottawa, Ontario, while helping Relief Society sisters raise money for the first Latter-day Saint meetinghouse in the nation's capital. Ever the frugal homemaker, Viv sewed carpet samples together for the living room floor in their first home in Ottawa.
Soon after arriving in Provo, she started an annual Christmas activity making hundreds of glazed doughnuts for the neighbors, which became a family tradition for decades. This was accomplished in a new house that Vivian designed and had a contractor build on Arapaho Lane. She did most of the initial indoor painting and was forever making the inside and outside a comfortable and attractive family nest. Several remodels were accomplished over the half-century as a result of her ingenuity. In a major add-on, she made sure a loft over the two-car garage was created for grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Taking classes provided the opportunity to learn the techniques of making jewelry and leaded/stained glass.
Woodworking was an enduring activity and, with no trepidation of power tools, she crafted household furniture and cabinets for the family room, a spacious sewing room, and for the kitchen in the mountain home, which she built jointly with Myron and family members. Some of Viv's genes and family tradition supported the woodworking activity. Her grandfather, Samuel Edwin McClellan, constructed the Juarez Stake Academy building in the Mormon colonies of Mexico, and these genes have been manifested in Vivian's children and grandchildren. Her son, Richard, and his son, Russell, crafted her casket, which was decorated with the artwork of granddaughter, Jane Hughes, burned in by Spencer Hughes' laser tool.
Myron's work often took him from home on geology trips, so Vivian mastered household repairs and maintenance. For several summers, she was the camp cook for the BYU Geology summer field class in the wilderness of Nevada and western Utah, which provided the cash necessary to buy a new sewing machine.
Although rarely articulated, Vivian's testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ was rock solid, steadfast, and true. She served in many capacities as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, mostly in the Relief Society. She also sang in ward choirs and with Sweet Adelines. A good pianist, she played for church gatherings and for ordinance worker prayer meetings in the Provo Utah Temple. A love for the native people was developed while serving a welfare service mission in 2003 to 2004 with Myron in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Since then, Viv served as an ordinance worker in the Provo Utah Temple; a white dress topped off with a head of snow-white hair made her look like the angel she was in her heart.
Vivian's enduring legacy is her children, grandchildren, their spouses, and a growing number of great-grandchildren. Through a quiet, unassuming example, her posterity stands as a unified, responsible contribution to society and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Vivian "Viv" Croft Best graduated, with high honors, from this mortal existence in Provo, Utah, on August 5, 2020. She was 83.
Family Message: "All of the family anticipated that Vivian would be a centenarian, like her mother, who lived to 105 and a great grandmother, Almeda Day McClellan, who bore 12 children and lived to 101, along with two Day siblings who died at 100! However, despite Vivian's genes, cancer of the pancreas and liver felled the great and noble soul at age 83. The family is grateful for the loving kindness of many friends and neighbors and for professional care by Dr. M. Austin Healey, the Utah Cancer Specialists, the Intermountain Utah Valley Palliative Care, and Symbii Home Health and Hospice, especially Marlene Oaks."
Survived By: Vivian will be sorely missed by her husband of 64 years, Myron Gene Best; four of her five daughters: Jenny Lyn Jensen (Brad), Teresa Fugate (Richard), Katrina Hughes, Laura Miller (Derek); her sons: Karl Fredrick Best (Catherine), Richard Russell Best (Marci), and Tyler Kory Best (Katrina); her 27 living grandchildren and their spouses; her 43 great-grandchildren; her sister, Mary Jones (Kendall); and brother, Clair Lewis Croft.
Preceded In Death By: Her daughter, Karen Best; her parents, Jacob Calvin and Lula McClellan Croft; her brothers: Mack Gerald Croft and Kent Calvin Croft; as well as grandchildren: Hannah Elizabeth Hughes and Ansel Edison Best.
Viewing & Funeral: Nelson Family Mortuary
Instructions: Pandemic protocol, masks required
Service Option: Webcast via mortuary website
Interment: Provo City Cemetery
Obituary: © 2020 | Nelson Family Mortuary
Bio compiled by: Annie Duckett Hundley
1936 - 2020
Early Life: Vivian was born October 20, 1936, in Provo, Utah, to Jacob Calvin and Lula McClellan Croft. Viv lived in Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada, while her father worked for the government. Her fondest memories, while growing up, were during the years of World War II when she lived in Cedar City, Utah. The nearby campus of the Branch Agricultural College (now Southern Utah University) and juniper-covered hills to the west, provided ample opportunities for youthful activities. Skipping her senior year at Granite High School in Salt Lake City, Vivian attended the University of Utah on a Ford Foundation scholarship for one year and then transferred to Brigham Young University for a year. She had a lifelong interest in medicine and biology but further academic pursuits were curtailed upon marriage and arrival of children.
Life's Work | Service | Interests: On March 16, 1956, Vivian married Myron Gene Best in the Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
While her children were growing up, Vivian taught by example, never lecturing. Life skills were learned by watching. Her daughter, Katrina, recalls: "I remember the summer before I started first grade. She asked me to draw pictures of the school clothes I wanted her to make me for that year. I tagged along to the fabric store to pick out what I wanted; never was it her that chose for me. We would then come home, clean off the kitchen table, and the drafting began–on paper towels, mind you, because tissue paper was too expensive. We had the paper towel patterns and to this day that's how I do mine!! She made my school wardrobe exactly to my drawings. This continued through my fourth grade year until I took over–unknowingly her apprentice, unnoticed I had learned what I needed to make my own patterns and sew my own clothes–I never once had a 'lesson'–just simply watching and doing it along side her. I don't recall her ever trying to change my mind of the fabric I picked even in the first grade."
Vivian's crowning achievement in her sewing room over the past several years was the production of a unique quilt for each of her children and 27 living grandchildren. Aided by her fellow sewers in a quilt group, she crafted unique and exquisite works of art. But the most memorable one was a baby quilt she helped her oldest daughter, Karen, undertake when she was 13, for her little brother, Richard. But the ravages of cancer precluded Karen's completion of the quilt, so with finishing touches supplied by two grandmothers, the quilt was finished. It was auctioned at the Festival of Trees and hung in the Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City for several years, before finding a place in the entry of the Arapaho home.
Much preferring stitchin' over the kitchen, Vivian's lifelong love and joy was sewing. It started with making her own wedding dress, followed by additional ones for daughters, a daughter-in-law, and granddaughters. There wasn't much that she could not make a pattern for, or alter, and sew to completion, including children's and men's clothes and chair covers.
Vivian liked to travel. Tours were enjoyed to Israel, Turkey, Greece, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, the Caribbean, Japan, Alaska, and Hawaii.
An insatiable and highly productive interest focused around doing things with her hands and solving problems. She accurately typed Myron's thesis in 1961, making three carbon copies, and a decade later, with equal accuracy, typed several drafts of his manuscript that was published as a 630-page textbook. She crocheted, tatted, carded and spun alpaca wool on her spinning wheel, knitting a warm sweater for herself. Dipping chocolates was mastered in Ottawa, Ontario, while helping Relief Society sisters raise money for the first Latter-day Saint meetinghouse in the nation's capital. Ever the frugal homemaker, Viv sewed carpet samples together for the living room floor in their first home in Ottawa.
Soon after arriving in Provo, she started an annual Christmas activity making hundreds of glazed doughnuts for the neighbors, which became a family tradition for decades. This was accomplished in a new house that Vivian designed and had a contractor build on Arapaho Lane. She did most of the initial indoor painting and was forever making the inside and outside a comfortable and attractive family nest. Several remodels were accomplished over the half-century as a result of her ingenuity. In a major add-on, she made sure a loft over the two-car garage was created for grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Taking classes provided the opportunity to learn the techniques of making jewelry and leaded/stained glass.
Woodworking was an enduring activity and, with no trepidation of power tools, she crafted household furniture and cabinets for the family room, a spacious sewing room, and for the kitchen in the mountain home, which she built jointly with Myron and family members. Some of Viv's genes and family tradition supported the woodworking activity. Her grandfather, Samuel Edwin McClellan, constructed the Juarez Stake Academy building in the Mormon colonies of Mexico, and these genes have been manifested in Vivian's children and grandchildren. Her son, Richard, and his son, Russell, crafted her casket, which was decorated with the artwork of granddaughter, Jane Hughes, burned in by Spencer Hughes' laser tool.
Myron's work often took him from home on geology trips, so Vivian mastered household repairs and maintenance. For several summers, she was the camp cook for the BYU Geology summer field class in the wilderness of Nevada and western Utah, which provided the cash necessary to buy a new sewing machine.
Although rarely articulated, Vivian's testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ was rock solid, steadfast, and true. She served in many capacities as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, mostly in the Relief Society. She also sang in ward choirs and with Sweet Adelines. A good pianist, she played for church gatherings and for ordinance worker prayer meetings in the Provo Utah Temple. A love for the native people was developed while serving a welfare service mission in 2003 to 2004 with Myron in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Since then, Viv served as an ordinance worker in the Provo Utah Temple; a white dress topped off with a head of snow-white hair made her look like the angel she was in her heart.
Vivian's enduring legacy is her children, grandchildren, their spouses, and a growing number of great-grandchildren. Through a quiet, unassuming example, her posterity stands as a unified, responsible contribution to society and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Vivian "Viv" Croft Best graduated, with high honors, from this mortal existence in Provo, Utah, on August 5, 2020. She was 83.
Family Message: "All of the family anticipated that Vivian would be a centenarian, like her mother, who lived to 105 and a great grandmother, Almeda Day McClellan, who bore 12 children and lived to 101, along with two Day siblings who died at 100! However, despite Vivian's genes, cancer of the pancreas and liver felled the great and noble soul at age 83. The family is grateful for the loving kindness of many friends and neighbors and for professional care by Dr. M. Austin Healey, the Utah Cancer Specialists, the Intermountain Utah Valley Palliative Care, and Symbii Home Health and Hospice, especially Marlene Oaks."
Survived By: Vivian will be sorely missed by her husband of 64 years, Myron Gene Best; four of her five daughters: Jenny Lyn Jensen (Brad), Teresa Fugate (Richard), Katrina Hughes, Laura Miller (Derek); her sons: Karl Fredrick Best (Catherine), Richard Russell Best (Marci), and Tyler Kory Best (Katrina); her 27 living grandchildren and their spouses; her 43 great-grandchildren; her sister, Mary Jones (Kendall); and brother, Clair Lewis Croft.
Preceded In Death By: Her daughter, Karen Best; her parents, Jacob Calvin and Lula McClellan Croft; her brothers: Mack Gerald Croft and Kent Calvin Croft; as well as grandchildren: Hannah Elizabeth Hughes and Ansel Edison Best.
Viewing & Funeral: Nelson Family Mortuary
Instructions: Pandemic protocol, masks required
Service Option: Webcast via mortuary website
Interment: Provo City Cemetery
Obituary: © 2020 | Nelson Family Mortuary
Bio compiled by: Annie Duckett Hundley
Vivian "Viv" Croft Best
1936 - 2020
Early Life: Vivian was born October 20, 1936, in Provo, Utah, to Jacob Calvin and Lula McClellan Croft. Viv lived in Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada, while her father worked for the government. Her fondest memories, while growing up, were during the years of World War II when she lived in Cedar City, Utah. The nearby campus of the Branch Agricultural College (now Southern Utah University) and juniper-covered hills to the west, provided ample opportunities for youthful activities. Skipping her senior year at Granite High School in Salt Lake City, Vivian attended the University of Utah on a Ford Foundation scholarship for one year and then transferred to Brigham Young University for a year. She had a lifelong interest in medicine and biology but further academic pursuits were curtailed upon marriage and arrival of children.
Life's Work | Service | Interests: On March 16, 1956, Vivian married Myron Gene Best in the Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
While her children were growing up, Vivian taught by example, never lecturing. Life skills were learned by watching. Her daughter, Katrina, recalls: "I remember the summer before I started first grade. She asked me to draw pictures of the school clothes I wanted her to make me for that year. I tagged along to the fabric store to pick out what I wanted; never was it her that chose for me. We would then come home, clean off the kitchen table, and the drafting began–on paper towels, mind you, because tissue paper was too expensive. We had the paper towel patterns and to this day that's how I do mine!! She made my school wardrobe exactly to my drawings. This continued through my fourth grade year until I took over–unknowingly her apprentice, unnoticed I had learned what I needed to make my own patterns and sew my own clothes–I never once had a 'lesson'–just simply watching and doing it along side her. I don't recall her ever trying to change my mind of the fabric I picked even in the first grade."
Vivian's crowning achievement in her sewing room over the past several years was the production of a unique quilt for each of her children and 27 living grandchildren. Aided by her fellow sewers in a quilt group, she crafted unique and exquisite works of art. But the most memorable one was a baby quilt she helped her oldest daughter, Karen, undertake when she was 13, for her little brother, Richard. But the ravages of cancer precluded Karen's completion of the quilt, so with finishing touches supplied by two grandmothers, the quilt was finished. It was auctioned at the Festival of Trees and hung in the Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City for several years, before finding a place in the entry of the Arapaho home.
Much preferring stitchin' over the kitchen, Vivian's lifelong love and joy was sewing. It started with making her own wedding dress, followed by additional ones for daughters, a daughter-in-law, and granddaughters. There wasn't much that she could not make a pattern for, or alter, and sew to completion, including children's and men's clothes and chair covers.
Vivian liked to travel. Tours were enjoyed to Israel, Turkey, Greece, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, the Caribbean, Japan, Alaska, and Hawaii.
An insatiable and highly productive interest focused around doing things with her hands and solving problems. She accurately typed Myron's thesis in 1961, making three carbon copies, and a decade later, with equal accuracy, typed several drafts of his manuscript that was published as a 630-page textbook. She crocheted, tatted, carded and spun alpaca wool on her spinning wheel, knitting a warm sweater for herself. Dipping chocolates was mastered in Ottawa, Ontario, while helping Relief Society sisters raise money for the first Latter-day Saint meetinghouse in the nation's capital. Ever the frugal homemaker, Viv sewed carpet samples together for the living room floor in their first home in Ottawa.
Soon after arriving in Provo, she started an annual Christmas activity making hundreds of glazed doughnuts for the neighbors, which became a family tradition for decades. This was accomplished in a new house that Vivian designed and had a contractor build on Arapaho Lane. She did most of the initial indoor painting and was forever making the inside and outside a comfortable and attractive family nest. Several remodels were accomplished over the half-century as a result of her ingenuity. In a major add-on, she made sure a loft over the two-car garage was created for grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Taking classes provided the opportunity to learn the techniques of making jewelry and leaded/stained glass.
Woodworking was an enduring activity and, with no trepidation of power tools, she crafted household furniture and cabinets for the family room, a spacious sewing room, and for the kitchen in the mountain home, which she built jointly with Myron and family members. Some of Viv's genes and family tradition supported the woodworking activity. Her grandfather, Samuel Edwin McClellan, constructed the Juarez Stake Academy building in the Mormon colonies of Mexico, and these genes have been manifested in Vivian's children and grandchildren. Her son, Richard, and his son, Russell, crafted her casket, which was decorated with the artwork of granddaughter, Jane Hughes, burned in by Spencer Hughes' laser tool.
Myron's work often took him from home on geology trips, so Vivian mastered household repairs and maintenance. For several summers, she was the camp cook for the BYU Geology summer field class in the wilderness of Nevada and western Utah, which provided the cash necessary to buy a new sewing machine.
Although rarely articulated, Vivian's testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ was rock solid, steadfast, and true. She served in many capacities as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, mostly in the Relief Society. She also sang in ward choirs and with Sweet Adelines. A good pianist, she played for church gatherings and for ordinance worker prayer meetings in the Provo Utah Temple. A love for the native people was developed while serving a welfare service mission in 2003 to 2004 with Myron in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Since then, Viv served as an ordinance worker in the Provo Utah Temple; a white dress topped off with a head of snow-white hair made her look like the angel she was in her heart.
Vivian's enduring legacy is her children, grandchildren, their spouses, and a growing number of great-grandchildren. Through a quiet, unassuming example, her posterity stands as a unified, responsible contribution to society and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Vivian "Viv" Croft Best graduated, with high honors, from this mortal existence in Provo, Utah, on August 5, 2020. She was 83.
Family Message: "All of the family anticipated that Vivian would be a centenarian, like her mother, who lived to 105 and a great grandmother, Almeda Day McClellan, who bore 12 children and lived to 101, along with two Day siblings who died at 100! However, despite Vivian's genes, cancer of the pancreas and liver felled the great and noble soul at age 83. The family is grateful for the loving kindness of many friends and neighbors and for professional care by Dr. M. Austin Healey, the Utah Cancer Specialists, the Intermountain Utah Valley Palliative Care, and Symbii Home Health and Hospice, especially Marlene Oaks."
Survived By: Vivian will be sorely missed by her husband of 64 years, Myron Gene Best; four of her five daughters: Jenny Lyn Jensen (Brad), Teresa Fugate (Richard), Katrina Hughes, Laura Miller (Derek); her sons: Karl Fredrick Best (Catherine), Richard Russell Best (Marci), and Tyler Kory Best (Katrina); her 27 living grandchildren and their spouses; her 43 great-grandchildren; her sister, Mary Jones (Kendall); and brother, Clair Lewis Croft.
Preceded In Death By: Her daughter, Karen Best; her parents, Jacob Calvin and Lula McClellan Croft; her brothers: Mack Gerald Croft and Kent Calvin Croft; as well as grandchildren: Hannah Elizabeth Hughes and Ansel Edison Best.
Viewing & Funeral: Nelson Family Mortuary
Instructions: Pandemic protocol, masks required
Service Option: Webcast via mortuary website
Interment: Provo City Cemetery
Obituary: © 2020 | Nelson Family Mortuary
Bio compiled by: Annie Duckett Hundley
1936 - 2020
Early Life: Vivian was born October 20, 1936, in Provo, Utah, to Jacob Calvin and Lula McClellan Croft. Viv lived in Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada, while her father worked for the government. Her fondest memories, while growing up, were during the years of World War II when she lived in Cedar City, Utah. The nearby campus of the Branch Agricultural College (now Southern Utah University) and juniper-covered hills to the west, provided ample opportunities for youthful activities. Skipping her senior year at Granite High School in Salt Lake City, Vivian attended the University of Utah on a Ford Foundation scholarship for one year and then transferred to Brigham Young University for a year. She had a lifelong interest in medicine and biology but further academic pursuits were curtailed upon marriage and arrival of children.
Life's Work | Service | Interests: On March 16, 1956, Vivian married Myron Gene Best in the Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
While her children were growing up, Vivian taught by example, never lecturing. Life skills were learned by watching. Her daughter, Katrina, recalls: "I remember the summer before I started first grade. She asked me to draw pictures of the school clothes I wanted her to make me for that year. I tagged along to the fabric store to pick out what I wanted; never was it her that chose for me. We would then come home, clean off the kitchen table, and the drafting began–on paper towels, mind you, because tissue paper was too expensive. We had the paper towel patterns and to this day that's how I do mine!! She made my school wardrobe exactly to my drawings. This continued through my fourth grade year until I took over–unknowingly her apprentice, unnoticed I had learned what I needed to make my own patterns and sew my own clothes–I never once had a 'lesson'–just simply watching and doing it along side her. I don't recall her ever trying to change my mind of the fabric I picked even in the first grade."
Vivian's crowning achievement in her sewing room over the past several years was the production of a unique quilt for each of her children and 27 living grandchildren. Aided by her fellow sewers in a quilt group, she crafted unique and exquisite works of art. But the most memorable one was a baby quilt she helped her oldest daughter, Karen, undertake when she was 13, for her little brother, Richard. But the ravages of cancer precluded Karen's completion of the quilt, so with finishing touches supplied by two grandmothers, the quilt was finished. It was auctioned at the Festival of Trees and hung in the Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City for several years, before finding a place in the entry of the Arapaho home.
Much preferring stitchin' over the kitchen, Vivian's lifelong love and joy was sewing. It started with making her own wedding dress, followed by additional ones for daughters, a daughter-in-law, and granddaughters. There wasn't much that she could not make a pattern for, or alter, and sew to completion, including children's and men's clothes and chair covers.
Vivian liked to travel. Tours were enjoyed to Israel, Turkey, Greece, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, the Caribbean, Japan, Alaska, and Hawaii.
An insatiable and highly productive interest focused around doing things with her hands and solving problems. She accurately typed Myron's thesis in 1961, making three carbon copies, and a decade later, with equal accuracy, typed several drafts of his manuscript that was published as a 630-page textbook. She crocheted, tatted, carded and spun alpaca wool on her spinning wheel, knitting a warm sweater for herself. Dipping chocolates was mastered in Ottawa, Ontario, while helping Relief Society sisters raise money for the first Latter-day Saint meetinghouse in the nation's capital. Ever the frugal homemaker, Viv sewed carpet samples together for the living room floor in their first home in Ottawa.
Soon after arriving in Provo, she started an annual Christmas activity making hundreds of glazed doughnuts for the neighbors, which became a family tradition for decades. This was accomplished in a new house that Vivian designed and had a contractor build on Arapaho Lane. She did most of the initial indoor painting and was forever making the inside and outside a comfortable and attractive family nest. Several remodels were accomplished over the half-century as a result of her ingenuity. In a major add-on, she made sure a loft over the two-car garage was created for grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Taking classes provided the opportunity to learn the techniques of making jewelry and leaded/stained glass.
Woodworking was an enduring activity and, with no trepidation of power tools, she crafted household furniture and cabinets for the family room, a spacious sewing room, and for the kitchen in the mountain home, which she built jointly with Myron and family members. Some of Viv's genes and family tradition supported the woodworking activity. Her grandfather, Samuel Edwin McClellan, constructed the Juarez Stake Academy building in the Mormon colonies of Mexico, and these genes have been manifested in Vivian's children and grandchildren. Her son, Richard, and his son, Russell, crafted her casket, which was decorated with the artwork of granddaughter, Jane Hughes, burned in by Spencer Hughes' laser tool.
Myron's work often took him from home on geology trips, so Vivian mastered household repairs and maintenance. For several summers, she was the camp cook for the BYU Geology summer field class in the wilderness of Nevada and western Utah, which provided the cash necessary to buy a new sewing machine.
Although rarely articulated, Vivian's testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ was rock solid, steadfast, and true. She served in many capacities as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, mostly in the Relief Society. She also sang in ward choirs and with Sweet Adelines. A good pianist, she played for church gatherings and for ordinance worker prayer meetings in the Provo Utah Temple. A love for the native people was developed while serving a welfare service mission in 2003 to 2004 with Myron in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Since then, Viv served as an ordinance worker in the Provo Utah Temple; a white dress topped off with a head of snow-white hair made her look like the angel she was in her heart.
Vivian's enduring legacy is her children, grandchildren, their spouses, and a growing number of great-grandchildren. Through a quiet, unassuming example, her posterity stands as a unified, responsible contribution to society and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Vivian "Viv" Croft Best graduated, with high honors, from this mortal existence in Provo, Utah, on August 5, 2020. She was 83.
Family Message: "All of the family anticipated that Vivian would be a centenarian, like her mother, who lived to 105 and a great grandmother, Almeda Day McClellan, who bore 12 children and lived to 101, along with two Day siblings who died at 100! However, despite Vivian's genes, cancer of the pancreas and liver felled the great and noble soul at age 83. The family is grateful for the loving kindness of many friends and neighbors and for professional care by Dr. M. Austin Healey, the Utah Cancer Specialists, the Intermountain Utah Valley Palliative Care, and Symbii Home Health and Hospice, especially Marlene Oaks."
Survived By: Vivian will be sorely missed by her husband of 64 years, Myron Gene Best; four of her five daughters: Jenny Lyn Jensen (Brad), Teresa Fugate (Richard), Katrina Hughes, Laura Miller (Derek); her sons: Karl Fredrick Best (Catherine), Richard Russell Best (Marci), and Tyler Kory Best (Katrina); her 27 living grandchildren and their spouses; her 43 great-grandchildren; her sister, Mary Jones (Kendall); and brother, Clair Lewis Croft.
Preceded In Death By: Her daughter, Karen Best; her parents, Jacob Calvin and Lula McClellan Croft; her brothers: Mack Gerald Croft and Kent Calvin Croft; as well as grandchildren: Hannah Elizabeth Hughes and Ansel Edison Best.
Viewing & Funeral: Nelson Family Mortuary
Instructions: Pandemic protocol, masks required
Service Option: Webcast via mortuary website
Interment: Provo City Cemetery
Obituary: © 2020 | Nelson Family Mortuary
Bio compiled by: Annie Duckett Hundley
Inscription
MARRIED MARCH 16, 1956
Gravesite Details
Interment 12 Aug 2020
Family Members
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
Advertisement
