Celia Larsen Luce, 93, died Jan. 13th in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

She was born Dec. 3, 1914 in Provo, Utah, daughter of B. F. and Geneva Day Larsen.

She married Willard Ray Luce June 3, 1940, in the Salt Lake Temple.

Celia Luce was a member of America's Greatest Generation.

Born in 1914, she was a teenager and college student during the Great Depression.

She did not feel the effects as much as some others because her father was an art professor at Brigham Young University and had a steady job.

The experience evoked in her, however, a keen appreciation of scarcity and into her 80s she would save empty plastic containers in the assurance that they would come in handy some time in the future.

She was a schoolteacher for most of her life, teaching for over 30 years in the Alpine and Nebo School Districts.

She shared in the sacrifices of World War II as her husband and three of her brothers served in the war effort.

She taught school to help relieve the domestic teaching shortage.

After the war she stayed home to raise her two children until her daughter entered school, when she returned to the classroom.

She was a woman of wide interests and accomplishments.

She often talked about her best vacation being a one-week trip from Blanding, Utah to Provo.

She was a strong supporter for her husband in his photography, art and writing.

Her training in writing paid off as they wrote six children's books, and she contributed additional poetry and "shorts" to publications especially the Relief Society Magazine.

She took seriously her role in sharing the stories and experiences of her family to the next generation.

She loved to tell stories and would often start a sentence with, "Have I told you the story about?"

After retirement this took the form of written histories of her mother; her father; one of her life; one about her husband; and one of their life together.

She was unprepossessing, and after being included in the first editions of Whose Who in American Women, asked that she be removed.

She thought much of what had gotten her in the publication was shared with her husband, and he had not yet received similar recognition.

Her latest notoriety came almost by accident.

A "short" she had written for the Relief Society Magazine on putting our troubles in perspective somehow made it into the National Enquirer and then into the Reader's Digest.

The quotation is now in several books and at least 300 web sites.

She had sensitivity to the spirit and was able to see lessons in things others missed.

She loved her family, her students, and her neighbors and was loved of them.

She is survived by her children, Ray (Kay) Luce of Atlanta, Georgia, and Loretta (Robert) Evans of Idaho Falls, Idaho, ten grandchildren, and thirteen great grandchildren.

She was preceded in death by her husband and two sons.

Funeral services will be held on Saturday, Jan. 19, 2008 at 1:00 p.m. at the Rivergrove 1st Ward Chapel, 780 N. 700 W., Provo.

Friends can visit with the family one hour prior to the services at the chapel.

Burial will be in the Provo City Cemetery.

Published in the Daily Herald on 1/17/2008