Leda Whitmore Young

January 5, 1910 ~ April 18, 2011
Leda Whitmore Young turned 101 on January 5, the ninth of 11 children and the last one to pass on. She died on Monday, April 18, 2011, exactly ten years to the day after her husband. 
She is survived by sons Wayne (Louise), and Craig (DC) (Claudia) and daughter Amelie (David) Stoll.  Her 13 grandchildren are Suzanne Y. Aughenbaugh, Jennifer Y. Bayles (1967-2010), Stephen W. Young, Michelle L. Y. Guymon, Rachel Y. Riley, Darroll R. Young, Lindsay K. Young, Mark C. Young, Rebecca Y. Amesbury, Deborah Y. Hart, William P. Lawler, Ashley C. Lawler, and Derek S. Lawler.  She also has 28 great-grandchildren.
Both of her parents died while she was young, leaving her an orphan. She married Darroll Porter Young in the Salt Lake LDS Temple on November 22, 1938.
Monticello was her home from 1953 until 2001, when her husband Darroll passed away and she went to live with her oldest son and his wife in California.
Leda entered the nursing program at LDS Hospital in 1929 and graduated as a registered nurse. She went to the University of Washington and graduated in August 1933 with a Public Health Nursing Certificate to add to her R.N.  She was made a supervisor over the rural county nurses in Carbon, Emery, Grand, San Juan, Duchesne and Uintah counties.
On a trip to San Juan County, she stayed with the county nurse, Dorothy Bayles, who took her to a basketball game and introduced her to a red-head named Darroll Young. Thus began a five-year courtship, mostly by letter.   In June, 1937 she returned to the University of Washington at Seattle for another year of school and a B.S. degree. 
After marrying, Darroll and Leda worked in Salt Lake City until their oldest son, Wayne was born in April, 1941.  They took a job with the Indian Service and from 1941 to 1953 lived on Indian Reservations in Browning, MT, White Earth, MN, Keams Canyon, AZ, and Mescalero, NM. They had two more children, D. Craig in 1943 and Cheryl Ann in 1950. 
After ten years, Darroll changed careers and he and Leda took the family to Monticello, where he joined his brother Clyn, who was building “shuttle buggies” for use in the uranium mines that were sprouting all over the Four Corners area.  Thus Young’s Machine Company was born.
Leda went back to nursing at the Monticello Hospital in October, 1953, eventually working as the nursing supervisor for 3.5 years.  During that time, Cheryl Ann died as a result of a tonsillectomy, the Lariat Café blew up, and a new hospital was built. 
In 1962, she became Dr. Goon’s office nurse and surgical nurse, where she remained until retiring to part-time in 1975.  In 1962, they adopted a four-year old girl, Amelie from Tahiti.  Amelie has remained part of the family since then.
Leda and Darroll served twice as ordinance workers at the Manti Temple, years before the Monticello Temple was built three blocks from their home. They also spent 14 years in the Name Extraction program of the LDS Church.
She was known to always have a project or two in progress.  Her hands were never idle.  She and Darroll had large flower and vegetable gardens, and canned everything from pickles to apple juice.  The homes of children, grandchildren and friends show off the afghans, quilts, needlepoint pictures and other handwork that Leda has done over the years.
Forty three years of service as a nurse, raising her children on Indian reservations, and serving her church and her family are grand tributes to the resilience and determination of an orphaned teen-ager from Midvale, who dug her roots deep into the good earth of San Juan County.
Funeral services were held in California. Service were held in Monticello on Friday, April 29.