Bertis L. and Anna E. C. Embry

Bertis L. Embry was born in November 23, 1914, in Tipton County, Tennessee. He moved with his parents to Texas, Arkansas, and Arizona before the family settled in North Ogden. After attending Weber State College, he served an LDS mission in Germany in the 1930s just as Adolph Hitler took power. He returned and completed a bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering from Utah State University. His first job was for the Rural Electronic Administration. He worked briefly for the Manhattan Project before joining the Navy during World War II. He moved to Cache Valley where he taught engineering classes to the returning war veterans. He completed a master’s degree there. During a sabbatical in 1954 he received an engineering degree from Stanford University. He used another sabbatical to complete a PhD at the University of Missouri. Embry specialized in irrigation, agricultural, and electronic engineering. He worked for USAID on projects in Iran and Guatemala. He passed away on January 28, 1999.

Embry married Anna Elizabeth Coulson on June 6, 1941. She was born May 16, 1915 in Nephi, Utah and grew up in there. She trained as a nurse at the Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah and was working as a nurse at the Logan Hospital when she met Embry on a blind date. During most of her married life, she was a homemaker. She returned to work as a nurse while her husband worked on his PhD and then continued to work at a nursing home and as a public health nurse. She traveled with her husband and their five children for his work assignments. She passed away on September 10, 2003.

The endowment named after the Embrys includes their donations and their daughter Jessie’s gifts to the Redd Center. Jessie was hired by the Redd Center in 1979 and worked there as the oral history program director and assistant and associate director. She retired in 2014.