Dr. Rose Eyring Calder

Dr. Rose Eyring Calder 1912 ~ 2009 Rose Eyring Calder died on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at her home in Salt Lake City, Utah. Born in El Paso, Texas on November 21, 1912, she was one of nine children of Edward Christian and Caroline Romney Eyring and one of sixteen children in the Eyring family. The years before World War I when Rose was born were difficult ones, even for the hardy Eyrings. The family had been driven from its comfortable lifestyle in Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico months earlier by bands of Mexican revolutionaries and had found refuge first in a lumber yard and then in a small house just across the U.S. border when Rose entered this world. Infant Rose and family moved to the Gila Valley of Arizona and settled in Pima, where the northern slopes of Mt. Graham descend to meet the meandering, brown Gila River. Rose excelled in her studies and, despite missing the 1918 school year because of the influenza pandemic, graduated from high school and then entered Gila Junior College (now Eastern Arizona College) at age fifteen. Two years later, Rose enrolled at Brigham Young University where she graduated at nineteen, winning several of BYU's most prestigious academic awards. Rose taught high school English in Globe, Arizona for two years, where some of her students were older than she was, then moved east, earning a Master's Degree in English at Columbia University in New York City. She subsequently taught at Mesa Union High School in Arizona for five years until, in 1940, Rose enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the University of California at Berkeley to complete her doctorate in English under the tutelage of Dr. George R. Stewart, acclaimed author of Ordeal By Hunger. After four years of self-declared indentured servitude at Cal, Rose earned her Ph.D. in 1944, and then, hoping to help the war effort during World War II, joined the military, serving as a U.S. Naval Officer. After the war, Rose led an Arizona Congressman's office in Washington, D.C. and then served as assistant to Thomas J. Watson, the legendary CEO of IBM in New York City. In 1946 Rose returned west to teach in the English Department at Brigham Young University and in the process met the love of her life and future husband, Grant "H" Calder, on a blind date at her brother, Henry Eyring's, home. "The marriage was something of an arranged one", Rose joked later, as Henry had known Grant at Princeton during the war. Of that first date with Grant, Rose wrote cryptically, "After a good dinner and an hour or two of interesting chatter, Grant asked me if I wouldn't like to go for a ride with him. I eagerly accepted, and we drove up Parley's Canyon for a ways, stopping to talk at a bridge part way up the canyon. We seemed to hit it off very well together." Rose and Grant wasted no time courting and were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple on June 11, 1947. Rose and Grant's life together started in Vernal, Utah, but soon added stays in Boston, Massachusetts and Bloomington, Indiana, where husband Grant earned his Doctorate in Business Administration. In 1952 Rose and Grant returned to Salt Lake City as Dr. and Dr. Calder and became firmly ensconced in academic careers as professors at BYU (Rose) and the University of Utah (Grant). But they were not to stay in Salt Lake long. In 1956, together with their three young children, they agreed to take three-year teaching positions for the Ford Foundation in Rangoon, Burma in a then largely-unknown and obscure corner of Southeast Asia. Living in Burma changed the Calders' lives. Three years after returning from Burma, the family left Utah again for two years in Africa-Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Those years included (in addition to teaching English and Business) driving from Cape Town to Nairobi by way of the Congo, the Ruwenzori Mountains of the Moon, and Rwanda, visiting major capitals in West Africa, and crossing the northern Sahara by private car from Cairo to Casablanca-in midsummer. When asked how she dared do such things, particularly with her young children in tow, Rose said, "Grant was absolutely fearless; he would do anything, go anywhere." One wonders if only Grant was so fearless. Over time Rose's three children grew up, moved out, and began families of their own. Together Rose and Grant explored large swaths of the world: twenty-some-odd trips to Europe, ten visits to the Pacific, three to China, and others to seldom-seen spots from which point "the beaten path" was barely even visible. It was on a trip to Orlando, Florida that Grant suffered a heart attack and died on February 6, 1986. Although Rose and family were saddened at Grant's death, they took solace in the fact that death represented a temporary separation, at some point to be replaced by a more joyous eternal reunion. Asked on the eve of her ninetieth birthday if there were still places she yet yearned to visit, Rose had to think a minute, then responded, "Well, not really although I would still like to go to Vladivostok, take the Trans-Siberian Railway to the west and then spend a couple of days in Samarkand orTibet, perhaps" Samarkand and Tibet aside, there are few worthy things Rose did not do in her 96-years-long, remarkable life. She visited 145 countries, circled the globe five times, watched the sun rise on Mt. Everest and floated on the Dead Sea at sunset. She associated with prophets, presidents, and exactly one emperor, raised exceptional children, held her great-grandchildren on her knee, taught the privileged and learned from the destitute, and fashioned an enduring, eternal partnership with a husband quite as unique and remarkable as was she. As the size of her world made Rose's faith stronger, her expansive world view made her a teacher nonpareil. Serving in many callings in the LDS Church, teaching was ever her passion. Rose taught riveting Relief Society lessons in the Ensign First Ward well into her mid-nineties and stretched her own mind by reading more than two thousand volumes -including every book of scripture many times - after her legs refused to carry her further. She was an example to her children and an inspiration to her grandchildren, a paradigm of meticulous preparation, hard work, courage, and tenacity. Rose learned, earned, and taught the rewards of faith and hope and almost a century's righteous, moderate, and above all, purposeful living. Rose was preceded in death by her husband, Grant 'H' Calder, and is survived by sisters Jen Layton and Ethel Taylor, son Kent (Toshiko), daughter Gretta Calder Spendlove (David), son Scott (Jean), 11 grandchildren and 14 current and prospective great-grandchildren. Funeral services celebrating a life well lived will be held Monday, May 4, 2009 at 2:00 p.m. at the Ensign First Ward Chapel, 135 'A' Street, Salt Lake City, Utah, with viewings on Sunday, May 3, 2009 from 6:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. at Larkin Mortuary (260 East South Temple) and from 12:45 p.m. until 1:45 p.m. at the Ensign First Ward Chapel. Interment will be at the Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park in Salt Lake City, Utah. Online condolences maybe offered at www.larkincares.com