Thomas Richard Downard

Thomas Richard Downard passed away peacefully at home in Riverton, UT, on October 12, 2024, at the age of 94.

Richard, as he was known to friends and family, was born in Spring City, UT, on October 5, 1930, to Joseph Edward and Vera Irene Downard. As the younger of twin boys, he and his brother Robert spent their early years working in the small farming community and occasionally getting into mischief. Richard was always a quiet and intelligent boy who preferred reading to playing football. He fondly remembered his older sister Edna taking him and his brother to the movies on Saturday afternoons. He was greatly impacted by the death of his father when he was six years old and cherished the few memories he had of him.

When Richard was in high school, the family moved to Moab, and he and Robert worked picking watermelons in the summers. After high school, Richard joined the Navy for what was supposed to be a 2-year enlistment during which he spent time in San Francisco and Key West, but the Korean War broke out in June of 1950, not long before his tour was supposed to end. His service was extended indefinitely, and he was assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Sicily as an electronics technician. The carrier stayed a few miles off the coast of Korea during the conflict, but shore leave was either in Japan or Okinawa, so even though the crew could see Korea, he never set foot in the country. He was honorably discharged on December 23, 1953, and traveled day and night to get home in time to surprise his mother on Christmas day. It was in the Navy that he discovered his love of reading science fiction, a passion he maintained his entire life. 

After leaving the Navy, Richard was not sure what his next step should be, so he decided to serve in an LDS mission and was assigned to Copenhagen, Denmark. Since Mount Pleasant and Spring City both had large Scandinavian populations, he felt very at home in Denmark and enjoyed the people and the country. Because cars were rare and very expensive, most people rode bicycles for transportation, so he got accustomed to bicycling everywhere and enjoyed riding.

After returning home to Moab, he worked for a time in the local uranium mill, then moved to Richland, WA, near his eldest sister Newella and her husband, John Myers. He eventually got a job working at the Hanford nuclear site and thus started his career in nuclear physics and waste management. After a few years in Washington, he visited his mother in Spring City and was reintroduced to Mehl Draper, who was the younger sister of one of his childhood friends. They enjoyed each other’s company and quickly decided to get married. Then he returned to Richland, and she returned to Salt Lake. They spent the next year getting to know each other through phone calls and writing letters and were married on December 28, 1964, in the Manti LDS temple.

The newlyweds moved to Bountiful, UT, and Richard took a job with the Radiological Health Department at the University of Utah. Before long, they were expecting, and Mehl gave birth to their eldest daughter, Melissa. Soon after, Mehl discovered she was expecting again, and they welcomed their second daughter, Christine, followed by a stillborn daughter named Amy. A year after the heartbreak of losing their daughter, Mehl again became pregnant, and they happily welcomed their eldest son, Eric. After the loss of Amy, Mehl and Richard often felt that something was missing, and several years later, their family was completed with the birth of their youngest son, Benjamin.

Richard moved into sales of nuclear detection instruments and, due to job pressure, relocated the family to New Mexico in 1985, living first in historic Santa Fe for eight years and then relocating to Albuquerque. He spent many years traveling as a salesman, at first across the US and eventually all throughout Europe. He was in Sweden when the first fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster was detected and spent several months afterward visiting nuclear facilities all across Europe. During the time he was traveling, he and Mehl were also able to do some traveling, and they visited Copenhagen together, which he loved. After several years he tired of traveling so much and went to work at Sandia National Laboratories, working in nuclear waste classification and writing handling and disposal protocols for many different types of waste. He even tried his hand at writing a couple of science fiction novels, although he wrote just for enjoyment and never intended to publish them.

Richard was a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and church service was a large part of his life. He served in many church callings over the years, as well as serving as bishop of the 20th ward in Bountiful, UT and years later a second calling as bishop of the El Camino Real ward in Santa Fe, NM. When he finally retired from Sandia, he and Mehl worked in the Albuquerque LDS temple, where Richard served as a scheduler and a trainer for other temple workers. At the same time, he and Mehl spent multiple years working in the church’s extraction program, digitizing hand-written birth, marriage, and death records from all around the world to be added to the genealogical library.

When Mehl’s health began to decline, Richard withdrew from his temple duties to become her full-time caregiver and cared for her around the clock until her death in July 2022. This was a difficult time for him, so after she passed, he moved back to Utah to live with his daughter Melissa and be near family. There, he regained his strength and enjoyed his days walking around the park, visiting Ben and Julie, and watching his favorite TV show, a Canadian sitcom called Corner Gas. He also enjoyed Melissa’s dogs and could often be found napping on the couch with Loki’s head in his lap.

Richard is preceded in death by his beloved wife Mehl Downard, his parents Edward Downard and Vera Downard Sorenson, his sisters Newella (John) Myers and Edna (Sterling) Patten, and his twin brother Robert (Mary) Downard. He is survived by his children, Melissa Egbert (Frank Mercurio), Christine Ortiz (Michael Ortiz), Eric Downard, and Benjamin Downard (Julie Downard), as well as his sister-in-law Patricia Draper. He is also the proud grandfather to his three beloved grandchildren: Ashton, Taylor, and Jadyn Ortiz.

Friends and family are welcome to a graveside service where Richard will be laid to rest. The service will begin at 11:00 am on Thursday, October 24, 2024, at Memorial Lakeview Mortuary & Cemetery, 1640 East Lakeview Drive, Bountiful, Utah.

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