She stood up for the underdog, but she did it in a way that was trying to bring understanding, it wasn't offensive in any way. She was a bridger. The minute you bring in the story of an individual it changes the way you feel about a group. – Dinny, Emma Lou Thayne's daughter
SALT LAKE CITY — I first met Emma Lou Thayne when I joined the Deseret News as a sports writer in the 1970s and was assigned the high school beat. Part of my assignment was to rank the top teams every week in the state in football and basketball. To do that, I had a board of voters, one of whom was her.
Two things surprised me. One was how much interest she took in what we were doing. Where some on the board would tend to say, “I don’t know, whatever you think,” Emma Lou, a poet and a tennis player, put genuine thought into it.
The other was how much interest she took in me, a 24-year-old fresh out of journalism school at BYU. She wanted to know who I was, where I came from, what I was doing. She found me fascinating!
That fascination, that ability to make anyone and everyone feel like they were the most interesting person in the world, was Emma Lou Thayne’s m.o., what her daughter Dinny calls “her gift: getting other people’s stories, finding out who they are, beyond any title or connections, who they are themselves, as individuals. People love telling their stories, but not too many really, truly listen when others tell theirs. She’d listen, and she’d remember.”
Everyone’s remembering Emma Lou this month. She died a week ago of causes incident to age. Chronologically she was 90, but in terms of energy expended she was more like 990.
She didn’t do it all but she tried. She composed poems, she wrote novels, she penned the lyrics to a song that made it into the LDS hymnbook (“Where Can I Turn for Peace,” page 129). When the Internet came along, she wrote a blog. She and her husband Mel — their 65th wedding anniversary is this month — raised five daughters. She was an outstanding tennis player, teaming for years with her brother Rick Warner to form a feared mixed doubles team and after that with Kathy Rothfels to earn a national No. 2 ranking in women’s 55 doubles. She taught English at the U., she served on boards, including the board of directors at the Deseret News and the general board of the Young Women’s organization of the LDS Church. She stepped up for causes, including but not limited to, AIDS awareness, mental health awareness, world peace, women’s rights and Title IX equality for women’s sports.
Behind it all was her inordinate curiosity of and affection for people.
The causes were never as important as the humans behind them.
“She stood up for the underdog, but she did it in a way that was trying to bring understanding, it wasn’t offensive in any way,” says her daughter. “She was a bridger. The minute you bring in the story of an individual it changes the way you feel about a group.”
In her poignant autobiography, “The Place of Knowing,” Emma Lou talks about one of those individuals, a painter named Paul Fini she met in 1983 while on an artist’s retreat to Virginia. Fini was gay and later died of AIDS, sparking Emma Lou’s awareness of the disease, which was then just emerging. Fini left a series of paintings, 14 depictions of Christ carrying the cross, to his Mormon friend, who crusaded to get them displayed and help the fight against AIDS.
She wrote this about that experience:
“Why were the paintings left to me? I wonder. But then, I know: To be a bridge between his world and mine. To be seen as a vehicle for understanding, not only the paintings and their significance, but the painter and his significance.”
The last time I saw Emma Lou in person was too long ago, in 2003. Tom Smart and I had finished the first draft of a book we wrote about his niece’s kidnapping and rescue and had asked Emma Lou if she’d look it over. She did, in her usual all-in way. She invited us to her home for her critique, which was equal parts glowing and critically constructive. Let’s just say we had some lessons to learn about getting past tense and present tense right.
Then we sat on her couch as she wanted to know all the details. If the highest, truest definition of a friend is one who, no matter how long it’s been since you last talked, picks right back up with you as though you’d never been apart, Emma Lou Thayne qualified with flying colors. It was as if we’d just finished talking about what high school team should be No. 1.
Lee Benson's About Utah column runs Mondays. Email: benson@deseretnews.com