Beverly Hayes Dalley passed away peacefully in her sleep at the age of 101 on October 20, 2024. She was born in 1923 in Pleasant Grove, Utah and lived nearly her entire life along the Wasatch Front in Utah. A Celebration of Life service will be held on Saturday November 2, 2024, at 1 PM at the First Presbyterian Church of Ogden, located at 880 28th Street, Ogden, Utah 84403. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the University of Utah, specified for the Junius J. Hayes Diversity Scholarship in Mathematics and sent to the attention of James DeGooyer, College of Science. Her ashes, along with those of her late husband, C. Wallace Dalley, will be interred at the family cemetery plot at a future date.

From her earliest years on a farm in Pleasant Grove, Utah in the 1920's, to young womanhood in Salt Lake City (SLC) and studies at the University of Utah (UofU), Beverly always carried a strong sense of self-determination. Her belief in the power of education was exemplified by her parents. Her father, Junius J. Hayes, was a Civil Engineer, and an Associate Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at the UofU in SLC. Junius was in charge of the small Observatory on Campus, where Beverly got an early introduction to the stars and constellations. During the Great Depression, her father was contracted to design and build the Giant Racer, the wooden roller-coaster at the old Saltair Resort on the Great Salt Lake. Beverly enjoyed many free rides there as a child. This job allowed the family to keep their home in SLC, just a few blocks from the University campus. Her mother, Genevieve Hayes, kept the home and raised five children. Genevieve's education had been at the Salt Lake Business College. Genevieve was a singer and pianist who played the organ for the University Ward Relief Society for 35 years. In those years before television or computers, friends and family often gathered around her piano for an evening to sing and laugh together. Their home was a warm and welcoming central meeting place for socializing and a having a great home-cooked meal. In fact, when asked how she managed to live so long, Bev would mention that her family almost never went out to eat. Her mother insisted on healthy home-cooked meals. Beverly's other longevity secret was chocolate. At all times, medicinal chocolate ice cream and /or Reese's peanut butter cups needed to be at hand.

Growing up, Beverly enjoyed the benefits of living near the university. She attended elementary and junior high at the Stewart Training School on the UofU campus. She then attended and graduated from East High School in SLC. Beverly excelled in the Arts and Literature. Like her mother, Genevieve, Beverly had a beautiful singing voice. For a period of time, she was an alternate voice with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir; she belonged to the university Women's Glee Club, and sang A Capella. For visual art expression she drew, painted, made woodcuts and portraits, and developed her own sense of design. Beverly performed modern dance recitals with the UofU Orchesis honorary dance club. She was at the top of her class in English Literature, also mastering grammar and editing. Reading books was one of her passions, as was gardening.

It was not lost upon her that many women in Salt Lake City were not as fortunate to have the privileges of education in the 1940's. Beverly's studied biology and zoology at the UofU, where she excelled and earned a Bachelor of Science degree. She worked under Professor Fayette Stevens, the first UofU director of the new science of Heredity. He was studying the transmission of hereditary diseases, in particular, Muscular Dystrophy. In the Genetics Lab she created a chart on genetic expression of diseases in over 1200 early LDS families, which was included in a textbook by Dr. Ralph Chamberlain. In 2019, that original chart was on display at RootsTech Genealogy Conference in SLC, and Beverly had her photo taken with the UofU researchers who continue that heredity study more than 70 years later. Beverly once asked Professor Chamberlain, "How does one distinguish truth from falsehood?" He answered, "Study the evidence and the truth will follow."

Beverly met her future husband, C. Wallace Dalley, through her best friend, Mary Lou Turner, who was the only female in her Medical School class. This was a specialized wartime class that compressed four years of medical school into three for training flight surgeons for WWII. Mary Lou was Wallace's lab partner in the gross anatomy class. She noticed that he seemed lonesome, having moved to SLC from Idaho. She invited him to lunch at the student union with Beverly. That was the beginning of their beautiful, life-long relationship and marriage, including raising five children. Wallace not only became a doctor, but a psychiatrist. Eventually he and his colleague, Rhett Potter, headed the office of Weber County Mental Health in Ogden, Utah and established the Problems Anonymous Action Group (PAAG). For decades, Bev and Wally were active in the Book and Grog book review group that met at members' homes.

A pillar in Beverly's life was her interest in the First Unitarian Church which began when she and Wally were newly married and living in SLC. The church congregation was welcoming, with a humanitarian outreach that addressed current societal needs and injustices. They joined and stayed loyal to this congregation through a move to Provo, Utah, where Wallace worked at the Utah State Mental Hospital. Most Sundays they drove north into Salt Lake to enjoy the ideas and socializing, and often included their growing children in the Sunday school. When they moved to Ogden in 1970, there was no UU church, but only a tiny congregation of 3 or 4 devoted people. Beverly and Wally joined this small group and grew the church over the next 30 years until it was large enough to purchase its own building on 23rd street in Ogden with a full-time minister. After Wally passed away in 1995, Bev was known to say that in addition to her family relatives, "these Unitarians are the people who will know and care for me in my old age. They are my community." And truly, they have been and are there for her every step.

Out of all the issues that aroused a flame of passion in Beverly's heart was the need for equality of pay and status for women. She volunteered for and supported numerous organizations. On Bev's 99th birthday, she received a special honor from the League of Women Voters, which included a framed letter that listed her many accomplishments. "Bev was very active in the fight for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in Utah." Although the ERA failed to pass, Bev was undaunted and helped to organize the Utah Women's Political Caucus, the Utah Equal Rights Amendment Coalition, the Weber County Women's Rights Movement, and the Equal Rights Ratification Committee. She was also a charter member of the National Organization for Women and a founding member of the Weber County League of Women Voters. In 1983, Bev became a Board Member of the Utah ACLU. In 1975, she helped create the Ogden Rape Crisis Task Force. She served on the board of the YWCA of Northern Utah, which later became Your Community Connection (YCC), northern Utah's only domestic violence shelter. She spent many hours as a volunteer there. She personified how persistence, hard work, dedication, and love can overcome obstacles to social justice in the world.

In her 90's, Beverly determined to establish a scholarship at the UofU in memory of her father. In 2020, she realized this dream with the Junius J Hayes Diversity Scholarship in Mathematics, an endowed permanent scholarship. She personally presented the awards to the students, even at the ceremony in 2024 when she was 100 years of age. The family is grateful for the generous and thoughtful support Beverly received from siblings, in-laws, cousins, nieces and nephews, and friends over the years. The last four years of her life presented different and difficult challenges, as she developed progressive memory loss and dementia. With the help of Comfort Keepers and Visiting Angels, she was able to remain at home for most of that time. Her final four months were spent at the Avamere at Mountain Ridge Memory Care facility, with assistance from Inspiration Hospice. The family expresses tremendous gratitude to all the caregivers who gave her such amazing and dedicated care.