Suzanne Huff Obituary

Suzanne Snow Huff, our beloved wife, mother, sister, grandmother, and friend, left this world in February 2025.
Friday, February 21, 2025
Open house: 5:30-7:30 pm
Saturday, February 22, 2025
Open house: 10:00-11:30 am
Memorial service: 12:00 pm
Location:
Northridge Stake Center LDS chapel 1674 North 200 West Orem, UT 84057
Video streaming link: https://zoom.us/j/98474078389
Family interment service to be held at Spanish Fork Cemetery on Friday, February 21, 2025.
Suzanne was kind, inquisitive, musical, patient, pragmatic, and practically fearless. She loved her family fiercely and supported friends through difficult times. She had a life-long passion for learning. She worked hard, exemplified compassion, and always found a way to give people the benefit of the doubt. This created an incredible family culture full of love, kindness, and forgiveness.
Music was always an important part of Suzanne's life. Her kids and grandkids remember hearing her sing and play the piano for family singing time and for musical numbers, choirs, and accompanying the children or the congregation in church. She served for many years as a Primary music leader, which she loved. She would wear an apron with pockets and bring in unforgettable teaching aids from around the world. Well-behaved children got to reach in her pockets to find those treasures.
Suzanne was adventurous. She traveled to 32 nations across 5 continents and was a librarian in three countries. She loved to read, always working on several books at a time. Nonfiction was her favorite. She loved to cook and mastered the art of Mexican, Russian, and Middle Eastern dishes. She also made the best chicken noodle soup and apple pie in the world. She revered the Gospel of Jesus Christ and her life showed it. Suzanne served others constantly and was a peacemaker.
Born in 1946 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Willard and Pearl Snow, Suzanne was the second of five children. Due to her father's work in aircraft maintenance, the family lived in several places across the country as she was growing up, including Iowa, Massachusetts, Utah, and California. She had an old-fashioned childhood, playing softball, paddling in an old rowboat, saving turtles from the kids with BB guns, and impressing her teachers so much that she skipped a grade. She learned to play the piano, a talent she used throughout her life to enjoy music herself and to bless others.
In Iowa, when Suzanne was in 3rd grade and her sister Marjorie in 4th grade, they would do the dishes, and they started singing as they washed and dried them. They sang rounds learned from family and also learned to harmonize, singing "Down in the Valley," "White Coral Bells," and so many others. This was the beginning of singing with her family and even included a teenage quartet and singing "Happily Ever After."
Suzanne graduated from high school in Palos Verdes, California. She loved the campus of her high school, especially the ocean views. She was part of a dance group and enjoyed singing in choir, as she had a beautiful voice.
After graduation, Suzanne attended Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Attending BYU also meant she was again near her grandparents. She often visited her Grandma Dalton (whom everyone called Mother) for homemade fried chicken. She studied art history and pursued a bachelor's in English.
Suzanne is a true friend. She has high school and college friends she has kept in touch with for over 60 years, as well as many friends from later in life who live across the country and around the globe.
One day in the BYU library, Suzanne met a young man, Kent Huff, who was looking up something in the same card catalog drawer. They chatted about the topics they each were researching. The way Suzanne told the story, when she turned to leave, the young man said to her, "I know everything about you except your name!" She teased him back, "You don't know everything about me!" and began to walk away. Before she turned the corner, she paused and told him her name. Kent went home that day and told his sister, "I've met the girl I'm going to marry." The rest is history.
Education was very important to Suzanne. When Kent proposed, she made sure he was planning to support her in finishing her degree, and when she had kids she told us she wanted all her girls to have the opportunity to finish a bachelor's degree as well as her boys.
Kent and Suzanne married in the Los Angeles LDS temple among the palm trees. Suzanne chose a smart skirt suit for a wedding dress, and they celebrated at her parents' home in Palos Verdes. They both graduated from BYU, including some time spent living in a cute little old home in south Provo that still stands, next to farmland.
After graduation, Suzanne and Kent moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, and then to Alexandria, Virginia to allow him to pursue a degree in law. Their first four children were born during their time in Virginia. There Suzanne served as a Relief Society President at the young age of 25. While raising her little ones she really developed her ability to sight read piano music, and her kids remember leaning against the piano as she practiced. In 1979, Kent took a job that started their wild international adventures, beginning with their move to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Suzanne said that when they lived in California, her father would sometimes take the family to Tijuana, Mexico, but otherwise she had never been outside of the country. When she flew into Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France, on the way to their new home with 4 small children, she kept saying, "Kent, pinch me, I can't believe I'm really in Paris!"
During her time in Saudi Arabia, they had their last two children. It was considered a "hardship post," because of aspects like women being unable to drive or hold jobs other than nursing and teaching according to the laws at the time. Suzanne became the leader of the American women's group for Kent's employer, and Kent recalls she played an important role in making sure the women had drivers and cars provided so they could get out of the house. Suzanne found where to buy the freshest tangerines and cucumbers, learned to love Middle Eastern food, visited Jordan, Israel, Egypt, and made trips to Europe and Asia. While in Saudi Arabia, church meetings were held in her home. Suzanne served in every calling imaginable in her LDS branch and ward in Riyadh and enjoyed the friendship of people from all over the world, including the Philippines, Denmark, Lebanon, and Singapore. As always, she played the piano for her family and for church meetings. She played music in the kitchen while preparing meals. Music was a big part of life at home.
After nine years in Saudi Arabia, Suzanne's family moved back to the USA and lived in Springfield, Virginia. While there, Suzanne returned to school, working towards a master's degree in library science. She joined the Mormon Choir of Washington. She gave piano lessons and found other ways to contribute to the family's finances, such as taking the kids to do early morning paper routes and deliver phone books.
After four years in Virginia, the Huffs were off to their next international adventure. They moved to Mexico City, Mexico for three years. This was one of Suzanne's favorite places. She loved the people, the language, and the history. Building on her high school Spanish, she became fluent by the time they left. She built the collection of the new middle school library at the American school there and served as its librarian. True to her passion for learning, Suzanne was always looking for new and interesting places to visit and learn about, so the family traveled to many archaeological sites and museums. She found the best places to buy beautiful things to decorate her home.
From Mexico, they headed to Moscow, Russia for the next two years. Again, she took full advantage of the opportunity to live in a new place. She sought out museums and cathedrals and traveled around the country to learn about the history, the architecture, the art. She traveled to Saint Petersburg and Ukraine. She learned where to find the best produce and fresh bread. She sought out the most interesting handicraft markets. She also worked in the library which was part of the embassy resources for its employees.
They moved back to the USA and settled in Utah to be near family. Suzanne began working at the Provo City Library and enjoyed working there for many years. She continued to make use of her language skills in support of Spanish-speaking library patrons, building the Spanish collection, teaching classes, and creating community events. She reached the final stages of auditions for the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square and only withdrew because she was concerned about the time commitment. She taught a World Religions class for the LDS Institute, and just as she did in church she would make the lessons fascinating by bringing international food, special books and pictures, and decorative objects.
After retiring from the Provo City Library, Suzanne continued to energetically serve her family and community. She coordinated and cooked for frequent family gatherings and planned family trips. Grandma's house was the social hub for her family, where her children and grandchildren loved to gather and spend time with each other. Suzanne stayed in touch with old friends and continued to make new ones. She attended musical and dance performances. This included the annual Festival Latinoamericano where she enjoyed the cultures, cuisine, and the opportunity to reconnect with friends from the Latino community.
Suzanne volunteered at the family history library and worked on her own family history, writing stories from her childhood and combining them with pictures to share with her children. She spent countless hours organizing and digitizing old photos and documents to preserve and make them easier to share. She spent time practicing the piano and accompanying others while they sang. She encouraged her grandchildren to pursue music and drove them to and from practices.
Her adventurousness in living overseas in three countries with vastly differing cultures would have made Suzanne's pioneer ancestors proud! She often chided herself for being flexible to a fault, which was how she was able to adapt to constant change. Even after living abroad for fourteen years, Suzanne had not yet had her fill of traveling. By the end of her life, Suzanne had visited 32 countries across five continents, including France, Italy, Vatican City, Spain, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, West and East Germany, England, Scotland, Greece, Cyprus, Russia, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Morocco, China, Thailand, Hong Kong, South Korea, Mexico, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Canada.
Suzanne was very involved in raising her nine grandchildren. She shared the night shift for newborns, read and played with them, taught them piano lessons and how to sew and to cook their favorite foods. Suzanne was just as patient and loving with her grandchildren as she had been with her own children. Always wanting to learn and grow, in her last few months she still had difficult piano pieces set aside that she was learning for her own enjoyment.
Suzanne leaves behind her husband, Kent; six children, Emily (Nate), Benjamin, Andrew (Danielle), Marjorie (Jared), Merryl (Patrick), and Jonathan (Jessica); her nine beloved grandchildren Rosie, Max, Eric, Joseph, Elsa, Peter, Ellen, Daniel, and Matthew; and her siblings Marjorie, Jean, Wendy, and Willard. She joins her departed parents, Willard and Pearl Snow.
Her family misses her desperately. We are in awe of all she accomplished and the many lives she touched. If only everyone could be like Suzanne, this world would be heaven on earth.
– Songs to be sung at the memorial: