~ IN MEMORY ~
Carol Ann Wakefield, wife of retired WA/DL Capt.
A.L."Tony" Wakefield
Feb 14, 1943 — Aug 31, 2026
PCN memorial site
Obituary https://www.vistafh.com/obituaries/carol-wakefield
Carol Ann Wakefield died peacefully on
the evening of August 31, 2026, at Intermountain Health St. George Regional
Hospital, with her husband and five of her seven children at her side. She was
83.
She was born on Valentine's Day, 1943,
in Mobile, Alabama, the second of Fred and Marion Davis's four daughters. She
grew up mostly in Mobile, with several years in Chateauroux, France, where her
father worked as a civilian employee at the Air Force base. After high school,
while working as an X-ray technician and taking classes through the University
of Alabama, she met a Naval aviation cadet in flight training across the bay in
Pensacola named Anthony L. Wakefield. They fell in love quickly and completely
and married on December 19, 1964.
They began their family at Pearl
Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, where sons Glenn and Todd were born. Daughter
Sherry arrived a few years later, after Tony left the Navy and the family
settled in Southern California. There they built a home, a career in the airline
industry, and an orchard of 800 avocado trees. In 1979 they more than doubled
their family, adopting three siblings - Paul, Matt, and Amy - and also taking
in their adult older brother, Mark, as their own. In 1984 they moved the family
to Summit County, Utah, where Carol spent the next thirty years before she and
Tony moved to St. George in retirement.
Carol carried the grace of the
Southern belle she was raised to be and the grit of the Western mountain woman
she became. She never met a stranger. She would welcome anyone into her home as
family, sometimes to the surprise and even the chagrin of her actual family –
though every one of us has since come to wish we could be more like her in that
regard. She was a mama bear in defense of her children, and if the moment
called for it, she could tell someone exactly where to go - but so sweetly that
they would look forward to the trip.
She and Tony were inseparable for
nearly 62 years, as husband and wife and as best friends. Their travels took
them to very nearly every continent ocean, much of it by ship. Through five
years with COPD, the illness that ultimately took her home to her Maker, she
was slow to complain and quick to name what she was grateful for.
If Carol lived by a single principle,
it was that love conquers all. She met eight decades ·of whatever life sent her
by throwing love at it - at the problem, and at everyone in the room while she
worked on it. Her life is the argument for that principle.
She is survived by her husband, Tony;
her sisters, Edna and Judy; her children, Mark (Elva), Glenn (Trista), Paul
(Elizabeth), Todd (Paige), Matt, Sherry (Fred), and Amy; 17 grandchildren; and
four great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her parents, her sister
Patty, and two grandchildren.
