Vivian Adams

Vivian McConkie Adams quietly slipped away from us on January 21, 2024, surrounded by her family, at age 83 from causes incident to age. She was born March 1, 1940, to Bruce Redd and Amelia Smith McConkie.

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Vivian lived a life devoted to living, teaching, and defending its beliefs. She cut her teeth feasting on the meat of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ around the home table with spiritual giants, including her parents, grandparents, Oscar W. and Vivian Redd McConkie, and Joseph Fielding and Jessie Evans Smith. The blood of prophets coursed through her veins, and Vivian proved faithful to the mission entrusted to her to build upon that legacy and strengthen future generations.

After graduating from Olympus High School, Vivian attended Brigham Young University where she met and fell in love with Don Carlos Adams. Sealed in the Salt Lake temple in 1958, they have completed their first 65 years together. She earned a Bachelor's degree from Illinois Governors State University in Communications while she raised her family.

She served in many capacities in the church, including writing and directing roadshows and stake musicals, serving as ward Relief Society president multiple times, as Sunday School teacher (which she loved the most), and for twelve years on the LDS Chicago Region Public Communications Council. In that capacity she represented the interests of the church defending the family and speaking on controversial issues in numerous radio and television interviews in the Chicago media market and at political conventions in the Midwest. She was known for confounding hostile interviewers with her wit, logic, and conviction. Her efforts helped defeat the Equal Rights Amendment in the battleground state of Illinois as she fought for the dignity of women and their unique role in the world, the bedrock institution of marriage and family, morality in society, and the importance of the American religious foundation. She was awarded the Brigham Young University Alumni Community Service Award for her work.

Vivian and Carlos served a CES mission in Boston where they taught Institute at Harvard and Boston College, followed by 2 years teaching Institute for young, married BYU students, and later for her Stake single adults.

She lectured at BYU Education Week, BYU Women's Conference, and in LDS women's conferences and firesides around the country on church teachings and the important role of Eve in the Plan of Salvation. She taught church history and doctrine at American Heritage School, published several articles and electronic media on Church-related subjects, served as Historian and Educational Outreach chairman for the Joseph Smith Sr./Lucy Mack Smith Foundation and for the Joseph F. Smith Family Association.

She taught and bore testimony of Jesus Christ and his gospel with a unique power and conviction borne from intense personal study, certainty of personal revelation, and devotion to her covenants. She was able to hold an audience's attention as she wove both story and scripture together to create a tapestry of inspiring and motivating truth.

Her greatest achievement is her family, her source of strength and support in all her endeavors. She gathered her family around her for fun, art, creative writing, and instruction in the truths of the gospel. Her most important work was as a wife and mother within the sacred walls of her home. She found creative ways to nurture, teach, and inspire her posterity, regaling them with stories of their ancestor's heroic deeds, taking them to church and US historical sites and imbuing them with a love of ancestors and a reverence for their personal sacrifices in a righteous cause.

She was also endowed with a delightful imagination that allowed her to bring to life a world of fairy creatures whose adventures she wrote with such fascinating whimsy that her grandchildren waited breathlessly each week for the next installment to arrive by email. Her tales revealed the secret life of the mischievous Cherry fairies and bustabouts who tangled children's hair, dropped pine needles in their beds, scattered pearls throughout the house, and transported themselves in watermelon sugar bubbles. Through the years she taught her children and many grandchildren how to write poetry, paint, and appreciate art.

Vivian was preceded in death by her parents; her brothers, Bruce Jr., Joseph, Mark; her sister, Mary; infant daughter, Rebecca; and grandson, Nathaniel. She is survived by her husband; children, Julie Maddox (Matthew), Jeannine Savage (Kent), David (Marie), Daniel (LuAnn), Ruth White (Todd), and Mary Summerhays (James); 51 grandchildren (including spouses), 40 great-grandchildren, and a large extended family.

Funeral services will be held on Saturday, January 27 at 11:00 AM at the American Fork East Stake Center, 811 E. 500 N.

A viewing will be held Friday, January 26, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM at Anderson and Sons, 49 East 100 North, American Fork UT, and from 9:45 to 10:45 AM on the day of the service at the East Stake Center. Please share a memory on Vivian's Tribute Wall at www.AndersonMortuary.com.

The family wishes to express deep appreciation to the American Fork Stonehenge staff for all their devoted care the past three years.

Please click on the link below to watch Vivian's funeral service via live stream:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81806414699?pwd=dnBmeStEYm9EMndkbFJXRjhZUDVWUT09