Lynone (Lynne) Watkins Jorgensen Obituary (1929

Lynone Watkins Jorgensen, or Lynne as her friends and family called her, has a gift for including and loving others. She treats each individual she meets as if that person were one of the most special people in the world. She is witty, generous, kind, and had a certain Hollywood glamor in the way she looked and dressed. She was a wife, mother, daughter, accomplished genealogist and historian whose articles on the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints were published in several journals and in “Opening the Heavens”, a seminal book on important early Church documents and events. Lynne was the first of four daughters born to Victor Hughes Watkins and Ada Cleora Stromberg Watkins in Cedar City, Utah on April 28, 1929, near the beginning of the Great Depression. In third grade, Lynne contracted rheumatic fever and on doctor’s orders, spent nine months lying in bed where she passed the time on her back reading with a book suspended above her head. She recovered and later graduated from East High School in Salt Lake City just as World War II ended. She was tall, thin, glamorous and her world was suddenly filled with young men returning from the War. Lynne attended the University of Utah where she dated a recently discharged sailor and engineering student, Leland “Lee” Jorgensen. They married on March 24, 1949, in the Salt Lake Temple. She accompanied her husband to Stanford University in California where Lee earned an MS in Aeronautical Engineering. He then worked at NASA at Ames Laboratory in Sunnyvale, California, as a research scientist who helped design the Apollo spaceship and the Space shuttle. Lynne was active in her Church and loved to write and act in Church plays and other presentations. She sang in the Church choir and in a women’s singing group, the Harmonnines. In 1960, Lynne graduated from San Jose State with a BA in English and History. They had and raised their four children in California, with their children coming of age during the turbulent late 60’s and early 70’s. In 1980, Leland retired, and he and Lynne moved to Salt Lake City where Lynne got a job working as a genealogist for the Church Family History Library. In 1988 she completed an MA in History at Brigham Young University. She published many articles in the Ensign, the Journal of Mormon History, Sunstone, and BYU Studies and taught at the Salt Lake City campus of BYU. While working at the Family History Library, Lynne started locating and collecting the written accounts of those early members of the Church who had attended a meeting where Brigham Young had assumed the leadership of the Church after the first prophet, Joseph Smith, was martyred. Many stated that Brigham Young miraculously appeared to look like and sound like Joseph Smith. Those accounts and her analysis were published in BYU Studies and later in a book of important early Church documents in “Opening the Heavens,” published by BYU and Deseret Press. See: https://scripturecentral.org/archive/books/book-chapter/mantle-prophet-joseph-passes-brother-brigham-one-hundred-twenty-nine-testimonies-collective Lynne retired after more than 20 years at the Salt Lake Family History Library. Lee and Lynne moved to Fayetteville Georgia in 2012 to live with their daughter and her husband. Lee died in December 2013. Lynne died peacefully in her sleep March 3, 2025, age 95. Lynne was preceded in death by her parents, Victor and Ada Watkins, her husband Lee, her sister Carolyn Kimball, and a grandson, Mike Jorgensen. She is survived by her sons, Ron Jorgensen with his wife Jeannine, Paul Jorgensen, Jon Jorgensen, and her daughter Sara Anne Parker with her husband George Parker. She is also survived by numerous grandchildren and even more numerous great-grandchildren. As a wife, mother, friend, mentor, scholar, and genealogist, hers was a life of style, accomplishment, scholarship and service. Graveside services will be held at 3:30 p.m., Friday, March 21, 2025 at the Provo City Cemetery, 610 South State Street, Provo, Utah. The family will receive friends at the Berg Mortuary of Provo, 185 East Center street, from 2-3:00 p.m. prior to services at the cemetery. Condolences may be extended at www.bergmortuary.com. You are invited to enjoy the following video of Lynn’s Funeral Service that was held previously in Georgia: https://zoom.us/rec/play/S_cQxbXEtYKQHz6_8KWYvdYz-_nA0QhuHGxikXRHNN25V3J0RGLzupC0NkWFBvoh0vD0oTdvWbxmvbxn.h66qPc48Adkdd5s9?accessLevel=meeting&canPlayFromShare=true&from=share_recording_detail&continueMode=true&componentName=rec-play&originRequestUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fzoom.us%2Frec%2Fshare%2FV_EILz1-QuT5-LxCUTlax22a2JRYgerNLpjhgCdm9lTHeX-NECSURaL6kvuyXLfs.SwFICfOY29TULCCF