Marvin J. Ashton

Marvin Jeremy Ashton was a Utah politician, business leader, and religious leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was born on May 6, 1915, in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Marvin O. Ashton and Rachel Grace Jeremy. His life unfolded in the setting of twentieth-century Utah civic life and Latter-day Saint service, moving between business, public office, social services, youth work, and senior church leadership.

Ashton’s early life gave him close contact with both work and church responsibility. His father was a local LDS leader and later became a church general authority. As a youth, Ashton worked in the lumber business, and he later graduated from the University of Utah. He served a mission in Great Britain from 1937 to 1939, where he edited the Millennial Star. His mission president was Hugh B. Brown, a figure who was part of the same church world in which Ashton would spend much of his own adult life.

His public and professional work was varied. Ashton served as a Republican member of the Utah State Senate from 1957 to 1961. He was president of Deseret Book and was involved in other business ventures, including a lumber company. He also worked as managing director of LDS Social Services, a role that connected administrative skill with direct concern for people and families. In September 1969, he was named managing director of the newly formed Church Social Services Department. One month later, he was named an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Ashton’s LDS Church service grew steadily over decades. From 1958 to 1969, he was an assistant to the general superintendent of the church’s Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association, serving with superintendents Joseph T. Bentley and G. Carlos Smith. On December 2, 1971, after the death of Richard L. Evans, Ashton was ordained an apostle and became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He served in that quorum from 1971 until his death in 1994. Among his assignments, he was president of the Polynesian Cultural Center and a member of the board of trustees of Brigham Young University–Hawaii.

His personal life also reflected steady involvement in family, faith, and youth programs. Ashton married Norma Berntson in the Salt Lake Temple on August 22, 1940, and they were the parents of four children. In 1954, the couple won the mixed doubles championship in the all-church tennis tournament. Ashton was involved with the Boy Scouts of America for most of his life, earned Eagle Scout as an adult in 1963, and later received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award, the Silver Beaver Award, and the Silver Antelope Award.

When Ashton died on February 25, 1994, he was serving as chairman of the church’s Leadership Training Committee and was also a member of both the Correlation Executive and the General Welfare Services committees. The vacancy in the Quorum of the Twelve was filled by Robert D. Hales. For readers who come to his words today, his counsel carries the plain force of a life spent in service roles: “Always leave people better than you found them.” It fits the record of a man whose work often centered on leadership, welfare, youth, and care for others.