June Tanner Merrell
On Wednesday, February 19, 2025, June Tanner Merrell, age 97, passed away peacefully at the home of her daughter in Boise, Idaho.
June grew up loving music, learning to play the violin as a child and performing in church, at school, and later on a church mission to New York. Later, in Boise, Idaho she continued her love of music by joining a music service organization, Tuesday Musicale, with her sister, Dorothy where June eventually served as the local president. In 1961 she was invited to join the Boise Philharmonic where she played for several years. She encouraged all of her children to take up a musical instrument which gave them a place in Uncle Ralph Laycock’s family Thanksgiving orchestra.
June loved planting and tending flowers. At the house on Fairfield Avenue, she planted snapdragons, a whole row of asters across the side yard from a trumpet vine that came to claim yards of the fence. The vegetable garden began with rows of gladiolas. She grew geraniums in big pots on the patio. In the house on Palisades Way, she graced the front and side yards of their home with a living quilt of iris, daisies, roses, lilies, peonies, alyssum, cone flowers, columbines, and chrysanthemums. A continuation of the old trumpet vine drew bees and hummingbirds. A whole row of daffodils and lilies on one of the terraces out back announced spring each year with a smile of color. Roses were a particular delight for her. To the end of her days, June’s world was anchored in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the religion of her ancestors, and the faith of her heart. She embraced Jesus Christ as her savior and did whatever she was asked to help out the cause with humility and good cheer. After college, she served as a missionary for the church in Schenectady, New York. In her married life, she served in Primary, Relief Society, ward and stake libraries, missionary assignments, and temple assignments. Later in life, she and her husband, Evan served senior missions for the church at the Deseret Ranch in Florida and in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Following her mission to New York, June taught kindergarten at an overcrowded grade school in Salt Lake City. While she was herding five-year-olds at school, a former roommate and missionary companion invited her to meet J. Evan Merrell, a cousin of the roommate’s husband. Despite some misgivings at first on both sides, June and Evan met and fell in love, marrying in the Logan LDS temple in 1954. While Evan earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree at Utah State they were blessed with three children, Kevin, Reed, and Ann. As he was finishing up his master’s thesis, Evan accepted a job in Boise, Idaho with the Soil Conservation Service, an arm of the US Department of Agriculture. With several relatives already living in Boise, it was a happy move. In Boise, two more children blessed the family, Dorothy and Richard. After 17 years in Boise, it came as a seismic moment when Evan took an offer to transfer to Anchorage, Alaska for a new work assignment. Just getting there was an adventure! In Alaska moose stopped to nibble the family flower beds and June met a moose one morning as she was out delivering newspapers. When it came time to return to the Lower 48 in a family caravan of two vehicles, June fell asleep at the wheel in the middle of nowhere Canada and ran off the road. The angels were paying particularly close attention to her that day as the route she took off the road was the only place in hundreds of miles that didn’t end in a ten-foot barrow pit.
Back in Boise, June and Evan bought a home west of town out in the sagebrush and threw themselves into fixing it up and making it their own. She loved books and was drawn to taking courses in library science at Boise State University which led to a job at the Garden City Library where she championed an enthusiastic summer reading program for young readers. Dressed in a clown costume she visited local businesses seeking donations to buy the children books. When she entered a bank dressed as a clown, though, she found herself seconds away from being mistaken for a bank robber!
Evan and June accepted a call as senior missionaries to the huge Deseret Ranch in Florida owned by the LDS church. She helped Evan in his assignment as the ranch hydrologist and worked in the Orlando Temple. When a hurricane threatened the ranch, June made a command decision that they were going to move out of the trailer they’d been assigned into a small regular house that wasn’t being used at the time. Fortunately for all, the hurricane veered away from the ranch and they got to stay in the house that June had claimed for them.
They’d barely caught their breath after returning home from Florida when a call came for June and Evan to go to Hanoi, Vietnam so June could advise a medical school on setting up a modern library. June had her misgiving when she had to climb on the back of a small motorcycle driven by a young man for two-wheeled taxi rides through the busy streets of Hanoi to the medical school. However, she learned to hang on tight and savor the adventure. It turned out the Vietnamese weren’t enthusiastic about setting up a modern library but she and Evan made friends with several young people they tutored in English. She stayed in touch to the end of her life with Trinh Hai Hah (whom they called Amy), a young girl who grew up to be a teacher in Singapore.
Back in Boise again, June & Evan decided to build their dream home designed around all the features they wished they’d had in their previous homes. While living there, June came face to face with her family's predisposition for heart disease. Late one night found Evan sailing down State Street with June having a heart attack to meet an ambulance that took her the rest of the way to the hospital. Double bypass surgeries, stents, a boatload of medications, and a lifetime of physical exercise kept her going till she was nearly the last leaf on her family tree.
June outlived the love of her life by nearly a decade. After making do as a widow in their dream home for several years, she agreed to sell the house and move in with her daughter, Ann. To the end she was active at church, greeting folks as they walked into the chapel and assigning herself to write thank you notes to everyone who spoke in church and a fair number of other folks who she determined just needed a thank you note. She stayed active in the book club she’d joined years ago, leading the discussion around the chosen book as recently as several months ago. She nurtured her love of flowers with orchids inside her room and a window box outside her bedroom window with pansies, petunias, and calendulas. Her son, Kevin or her daughter, Dorothy came over once a week to take her to get her hair done or to get her nails done. June believed we need to move to live so she rode her exercise bike daily while listening to books on tape. Kevin, Dorothy, or Ann also took June for a walk in a nearby park or for a weekly ramble on the Greenbelt. She relished engaging in conversations about the world she grew up in and the world we now find ourselves in. Time had dimmed her memory of exactly where all the major streets are in Boise so an adventure out was an adventure into both the known and the unknown. She lived life richly, savoring and meeting its challenges and delights with a steadfast will. The world has lost one of its good souls in June Tanner Merrell.
June was preceded in death by her husband, Evan, her parents Roy and Lucy, and her brothers and sisters, Leroy, Glen, Lillias, Dorothy, and Lucy. She is survived by her five children, Kevin, Reed, Ann, Dorothy, and Richard, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
A funeral service will be held at 11:00 am on Saturday, March 8, 2025, at the LDS chapel located at 6711 Northview Dr in Boise, Idaho. Viewings will be held at the chapel, both the day of the funeral from 10:00 am to 10:45 am and the night before, March 7 from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm. Interment will follow the funeral at Dry Creek Cemetery. Donations and flowers may be sent to 6711 Northview Dr in Boise.