Few people can scan their past and single out the exact moment that "changed everything," the fork in the road that led them away from a path they never returned to.
Verla Gean Miller Farman Farmaian can. It was the summer of 1945 and she had just finished her third year of teaching in Cedar City. "I knew if I signed the next year's contract, that was where I'd be for the rest of my life," she said.Instead, she kicked over the traces and bolted for Washington, D.C. - choosing that destination mostly because she had never been east of the Mississippi before. The decision to move East led to a job as a governess with an affluent Hungarian family. Then one day in 1952 she sat next to "this absolutely breathtaking man" during a T.S. Elliot play in New York. He turned out to be her prince charming - literally.
Verla Gean Miller stopped being a governess only to marry Prince Manouchehr Farman Farmaian, prince of Iran and become Princess Farman Farmaian. Salt Lake papers ran stories on Utah's very own princess, noting that the bride's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Ray Miller of Murray, gave the royal couple a lovely garden reception.
When Farman Farmaian returned to Utah in 1955 to give birth to her daughter - Princess Batoul Roxane - the media again gathered around, interviewing the elegant princess and snapping pictures of her tiny daughter.
She was Utah's version of the Princess Grace story. But the culture Farman Farmaian married into wasn't nearly as cosmopolitan as Grace's Monaco. Iran's culture focused entirely on the male. "My father-in-law had eight wives. He fathered his last child when he was 85 with the parlor maid. My husband was one of 36 children," she said.
The royal family was educated to assume leadership roles in Iranian society. The prince and all his siblings graduated from German, English, French and American colleges. Some of the women in the family assisted in the women's suffrage movement that grew under the rule of the Shah of Iran. Prince Farman Farmaian served as financial adviser to the minister of Oil and Engineering and ambassador to Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador and Trinidad.
Farman Farmaian lived in Iran during its most progressive years. She was there when it was decreed that women no longer had to wear the long, heavy veils whenever they went out into public. Her sister-in-law helped pass a law that said a man could no longer divorce his wife simply by saying "I divorce my wife" three times in front of a witness.
Farman Farmaian remembers the zest of being part of a changing culture, where women got the vote for the first time. She was probably one of Iran's few working women.
"My mother-in-law is responsible for that," she said. "She told me, `Our life is rather a flittery one, like butterflies. You are much too serious a person and that life won't please you. I want you to be content. So if you want to get work, you have my blessing.' " So Farman Farmaian taught English at the Iran America Society.
Iran's modernization was not fast enough for the Farman Farmaians' marriage. Raised with plural marriage, Prince Farman Farmaian decided he wanted to take a second wife. "I understood that in my mind, but I couldn't understand it emotionally," Farman Farmaian said.
Her husband was adamant, and so the couple divorced in 1964. "I was the first of three installments," Farman Farmaian joked. He later divorced his second wife to take a third, whom he also eventually divorced.
After the divorce, Farman Farmaian moved to Holland because the prince's business took him there frequently and she wanted Roxane to be close to her father. Farman Farmaian taught music and speech while in Holland, working intermittently as a school principal.
She returned to the United States with her daughter in 1973 because Roxane wanted to attend an American College. Farman Farmaian came to Utah. Roxane went to Princeton, where she graduated with a degree in Middle East economics.
Farman Farmaian obtained a master's degree from the University of Utah and, once again, returned to teaching.
She has stayed close to her vast, Persian family now scattered all over the world. She is close to her ex-husband. "He's such a marvelous person and he's been so good to our child. There's no bitterness there."
The prince's family lost its royal status with the fall of the Shah. Prince Farman Farmaian and many siblings had to flee Iran when the Shah was ousted. "He literally had to flee for his life. Three of his brothers were incarcerated - one for eight years. The whole family was under suspicion for everything you could imagine," Farman Farmaian said.
She looks back over the vivid panoply of her life and feels no regret. "Life has been good to me. My beautiful daughter, the fascinating experiences I had: I wouldn't give those up for anything."
She brings the wealth of her varied life into her fifth-grade class at Wasatch Elementary, teaching her youngsters an appreciation of the various cultures that are a part of her. She never returned to Cedar City, but neither did she ever leave teaching. Farman Farmaian has taught for 40 years in Utah, New York, Iran and Holland. "I just love being a teacher," she said. Although she recently turned 70, she has no plans to stop.