Pamela Castillo

Pamela Christine Fillerup Castillo was born on November 17, 1951, in Longview, Washington, and died on November 21, 2025 in Orem, Utah. She did not remember either event. She emerged into consciousness along with her sister Linda in the midst of the unfolding escapades of Patricia–never to be called mom, sometimes known as Mimi–who had brought the girls with her down the Pacific coast to Long Beach, California. Next to sunny sands and stumbling breakers that would forever echo in her affinity for the sea, she had her first sorties into life: the tragedy of the peanut butter and bologna sandwich, learning to paint, seeing her mother–exuberant, social, lifelong painter–then meeting the man she would know as her father, Raymond Fillerup–Didi, and developing her deep faith in the LDS tradition. From Didi, a man who can only be thought of as integrity incarnate, she acquired her sense of the noble and stoic, and a large adopted family spread across the West with whom she would play, and travel, and pray, and love her entire life. With Mimi, Linda, and Didi, an Annapolisé U.S. Naval Commander, she adjourned to Caracas, Venezuela for several years, letting Latin culture and military rigor seep into her bones.

From there, her journey took her to the world of Philadelphia in the sixties, which ingrained a lifelong identification with the eclectic world of the East Coast and a mastery of such disparate pursuits as dressage horseback riding and jumping, rifle marksmanship, watercolor painting, photography, and folk music guitar. There, among a series of odd jobs and good friends, she met at church her first husband, John F. Hall III, budding professor of Classics and Roman History. With him and one-and-a-half children, she moved to Utah, where he would teach at BYU. One-and-a-half sons became two, then three, John, James–later Jim, and Jefferson–later nothing but Jefferson. She embraced the wild places and gentle creatures of Utah. Always with like-minded friends and family, she explored the red canyons and high meadows of Utah. In the turmoil of these years, her sense of self-empowering determination, and deep embrace of the motivating force of adversity led her back to school, and while taking care of the boys and making numerous new friends, she earned a business degree from the Marriott School at BYU and took a position as the Controller–she who controls all the purse strings–at BYU's business school. In this role, with her sense of dutiful competence, and attention to detail, she excelled, earning the respect of colleagues, numerous awards, and many new friends over her thirty some odd years there. She brought these same skills to bear in her occasional forays into architecture and real-estate. Anything worth doing was worth doing correctly and well. In the mid 90s she accepted that the first marriage was not helping anyone, and ventured back out on her own, secure in her friends, her faith, and her industrious spirit. She met Leonel Castillo, her match, her partner, her co-conspirator, and co-adventurer, and remarried in the pristine new Mount Timpanogos Temple.

They embarked on a series of adventures, both shaping their mutual world in Pleasant Grove, connecting with all the children–the three boys and also Ryan, David, Angela, and Matthew, whom Leonel brought to the party–and exploring the world around them. She found and connected with the lost family of her birth father and acquired two new sisters and opened her heart and love to a cadre of children-in-law and a steady troop of curious grandchildren. Through it all, she deepened and grew her spirituality and commitment to God and eternal principles while serving the church as a stake auditor, a gospel doctrine teacher, a visiting teacher, and community leader.

She and Leonel travelled all over the United States and abroad, including mainland Europe, Ireland, the Caribbean, Vancouver Island, adopted home of her sister Linda, and often to Leonel's homeland in Guatemala. There was no wild space safe from her discovery, no summit that could refuse her once she had set her sights on it, and no challenge she would not accept, from marathons to triathlons, to swimming the cold water of San Francisco Bay from Alcatraz without a wetsuit to the windswept heights of Yosemite's Half Dome. Her shelves became lined with medals and trophies. She loved her animals and was militantly responsible for them–and made sure you were too. From Pie-Wacket and Ko-ko, the Siamese cats, to Rebel, the Tennessee Walking Horse, to the long line of loving, faithful dogs: Diocletian, Idgie, Victor, and Solo, much of her world revolved around raising them (correctly) and nurturing them. She continually cultivated deep friendships over the years, from Jerry and Marge, to Lisa, to Lynn, to Nancy, Susan, the other Nancy, and Lori, who stayed with her right to the end to name just a few. Despite her endless pursuit and promotion of health, both inside and out, she became ill. And without complaining (this was not her way), and without ever, ever, backing down, she slipped away from us on a beautiful, sunny, Friday morning in the Fall, surrounded by family, under the watchful gaze of Timpanogos, the mountain she loved, to return to her Heavenly Father and her family and friends who had preceded her. As she said so many times, "onwards and upwards."

Memorial services will be held Saturday, November 29, 2025 at 11:00 am in the American Fork Central Stake Chapel, 320 North 100 East, American Fork, Utah. Family and friends may attend a visitation from 10:00 – 10:45 am. prior to the service. Condolences may be sent to the family at www.olpinmortuary.com.

In lieu of flowers the family suggest making a donation to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah or to your local food bank.