Obituary: Leland Milner Dunn

Leland Milner Dunn

4/4/1920 ~ 1/30/2008

Leland Milner Dunn, 87, son of Elizabeth Bean and William L. Dunn, peacefully passed away with his wife, Beth Woolley Dunn, at his side on January 30th, 2008.

He was born, April 4th, 1920 in Oakley, Idaho and graduated from East High School in Salt Lake City in 1938. Milner served as East High's Student Body President, varsity lettered in basketball, track and dramatics, and was appointed Corporal, Company "C" in the East High School Battalion of Cadets, all while attaining a perfect grade point average.

While graduating from the University of Utah in 1942 with a degree in Economics, Milner received the Sigma Chi Fraternity Balfour Award as the most representative undergraduate in the Utah Province. Among many other collegiate accomplishments, he was voted President of his fraternity, earned his varsity letter in track and dramatics, averaged a 96.5% grade point average, and was selected to the Beehive Society, Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Delta Kappa honor societies. He also was selected by the Political Science and History departments for a prestigious internship scholarship with the federal government in Washington D.C., which was the start of his multi-decade foreign service with the Department of State.

Milner joined the Foreign Service in the diplomatic corps in 1942 and was initially assigned to the Norwegian government in exile in London. With the ending of the war, he opened the American Embassy in Oslo, Norway and was later posted to American embassies in Hamburg, Germany, Belgrade, Yugoslavia and Monrovia, Liberia.

His assignment in Tehran, Iran is where he met his wife-to-be,

Marjorie Beth Woolley. Their offices at the embassy were next to each other and they found that they had an almost unbelievable amount in common: both were from Idaho, both graduated from the University of Utah, and while Beth was at the University of Colorado, she spent a year as "Sweetheart of Sigma Chi" (a chapter of Milner's fraternity). Still, they first met in Iran. They married on May 2nd, 1963 in

Tehran, Iran.

Their next posting was in Athens, Greece, and then finally at The

Hague, the Netherlands. Milner began his retirement years in Alexandria, Virginia, working part-time with the State Department, Economic Affairs in Washington, D.C. Beth and Milner completed their adventuresome circle of travel and returned to Salt Lake City in 2004 in order to be closer to friends and family.

Services will be held at 11 a.m., Saturday, Feb. 9, 2008 at the Salt Lake Cemetery. Online condolences at

www.serenicare.com