Walter Malin Lewis was born October 30, 1917 in Provo, Utah, the seventh child of George William Lewis and Olena Dorothea Kempe, both Arizona pioneers. He graduated from Salt Lake City East High School in 1933. He subsequently attended LDS Business College and Brigham Young University. He graduated from BYU in 1943 with a business degree with highest honors.
He served an LDS mission in the South Africa Mission from 1938-1940. He was in the US Army from 1943-1946, working in the Signal Corps in the South Pacific. After the war, he worked at First Security Bank in Provo, Utah. He later studied Engineering at the University of Utah. He married Orpha Moore on December 20, 1950 in the Salt Lake Temple, and they had four children: George Walter (Boise, ID), Karen (Phoenix, AZ), John Malin (Gilbert, AZ), and Tamara (Salt Lake City, UT). They lived for eleven years in Chicago, and twenty years in Wilmette, Illinois.
Walter graduated from Monroe Optometry School in 1953, and taught Optometry for several years at Northern Illinois College of Optometry. He served as Bishop of Logan Square Ward from 1958-1961. He worked at Stereo Optical Company in Chicago from 1950-1981, and he was president of the company from 1969-1981. He invented, designed and manufactured many optical instruments, including the Titmus Vision Tester, the Stereo Fly Test, the Copeland Optic Streak Retinoscope, and the Randot Stereogram. He retired to Provo, Utah in 1981.
He was an avid hunter, fisherman, tennis player, and lover of words and poetry. He devoted many years of unselfish care to his wife, Orpha, who suffered with chronic illness until her death in 1998. He is survived by his brother, Ben Lewis, his four children, and eight grandchildren.
Funeral services will be held Friday, June 7, 2002 at 11:00 a.m. in the Pleasant View 1st Ward Chapel, 650 East Stadium Way, Provo. Friends may call Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Sundberg-Olpin Funeral Home, 495 South State Street in Orem, and also 9 to 10:30 a.m. prior to the services at the chapel on Friday. Interment will take place in the Eastlawn Memorial Hills Cemetery, Provo.