Marian Ruth Bond

Marian was born January 27, 1934, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her father was Elden Angus Johnson, and her mother was Esther Ramseyer Johnson. She grew up in Salt Lake City Wells Ward, near 21st at 564 Redondo Avenue. She graduated from South High in Salt Lake after which she attended the University of Utah.

Marian later transferred to BYU and graduated in 1957 with a B.A. in English and a minor in Sociology. BYU is where she met her husband, Dick Bond, who had recently returned from his mission. She bled Cougar blue.

She married Dick Bond on December 27, 1957, in the Salt Lake Temple.

After her college graduation, she became a social worker for the Salt Lake City Welfare Department for a year, until Dick also graduated from BYU in 1958.

After Dick’s graduation they moved from Salt Lake to Dick’s parents’ home in Bethesda, Maryland, where they both found employment, she in a clerical position at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. At that time, she was pregnant with her first child, a boy who was born on January 3, 1959. From that time forward, she devoted her time to raising her children, as a homemaker. The children became the center of her life.

She has six children, four boys and two girls; twelve grandchildren; and seven great grandchildren.

Marian and Dick remained in the Washington area until 1970 when Dick got a job with a large railroad with headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio. They lived in a west Cleveland suburb for three years until Dick was transferred by the railroad to Baltimore, Maryland.

They lived in a suburb of Baltimore for 14 or 15 years until the railroad merged with another large company headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida. They moved to that city in 1984.

From 2000 to 2001, Marian and Dick served in the Washington, D.C., South Mission in northern Virginia. They spent their time there in an Asian branch of the Church where they worked primarily with Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrants, many of whom were refugees from their home countries. Many of them spoke little or no English, so with Marian’s foresight they began ESL, or English as a Second Language, classes. In the beginning they had only Asian students, but soon they were joined by some Hispanics as well. During the week they visited the Asian members in their homes and helped them with problems they had adapting to the American culture.

Following the mission, Marian and Dick moved to Orem, as they had sold their home in Florida when they left on their mission. They lived for several years in the Orem 12th Ward of the Northridge Stake, but had a yearning to go east again and moved to the Greensboro, North Carolina Summit Ward for one year, where they still have some wonderful friends.

But not being able to visit with grandchildren led Marian and Dick to move back to Orem, where they bought a house in the Canyon View 3rd Ward. They thought they were done with moving, but when Marian’s knees began to give her problems climbing the stairs in a split level home, she and Dick found the perfect home in the Sharon 3rd Ward, with everything they needed all on one level—and a bonus in finding her cousin, Denise Burton.

Marian was brought up in the Church and has an unshakable testimony of Jesus Christ and of His restored gospel. She has served in various positions in the Church. Her earliest callings were with the Young Women as an advisor and with the Relief Society, often as a counselor and once as president. She has in more than once served as gospel doctrine teacher in the Sunday School and loved the scriptures.

While living in Florida, Marian was called to serve as the Church’s Public Affairs person. In that calling she joined the Jacksonville Interfaith Council to be the Church’s representative. When President Thomas S. Monson and Elder Richard G. Scott came to Jacksonville for some meetings, Marian arranged for the vice chair of the Council, whose name is Warner James, to meet with the two general authorities in person. It was a warm meeting with President Monson focusing on Warner (with Marian staying in the background). Since that initial meeting, Warner started on the road to investigating the Church and was later baptized. She is still an active member.

Marian took the calling of motherhood very seriously, always going to bat for her children. When she first moved to Florida she quickly found that her two youngest sons were not learning anything in a poor public school. Even though money was a little tight at the time, she took the boys out of the public system and enrolled them in a private day school, going to the headmaster of the school to get scholarships for them. A good education was important to her.

About that same time, when Dick was between jobs for a while with little income, Marian taught herself very quickly how to write an effective resume for a local resume service. When that company ended the service, she took it into her home and invited clients into her home—mostly young people leaving the military. She was so good at doing that work she had a constant flow of clients from the two nearby naval bases constantly coming to get a resume from Mrs. Bond, solely by word of mouth from former clients.

She was a devoted mother, made friends easily through all of the moves from one city to another, and had a great sense of humor. Sometimes it was with a little friendly sarcasm, which she attributed to her Danish ancestry. She was a lot of fun to be with.

Even as she declined in her final year, her personality came through so often in her moments of lucidity. Almost to the end she and Dick still had romantic moments when they talked a little about their eternal marriage. Marian passed away peacefully March 10, 2026, while napping, at 3:24 in the afternoon. Her husband and younger daughter were present at the time.

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