(Olive)Joan Gillespie Gourdin

May 24, 1933 - May 15, 2022

(Olive) Joan Gillespie Gourdin was born on May 24. 1933 to Wilford Sharp Gillespie and Olive Diantha Jones Gillespie Haueter. She was the oldest daughter and had 3 sisters and two brothers. She was raised on a fruit farm in the Edgemont area of Provo, Utah. By age nine she was helping her dad and uncle by driving the tractor while they sprayed the fruit trees. She once said she sometimes had to put her whole weight on the brake to get the tractor to stop at the end of the row to keep it from going into the ditch. She helped on the farm picking, packing, and selling the fruit. She helped her mother do a lot of canning for the family. Peaches were her favorite but she loved all fruit all her life. She met a handsome young man her father hired to help on the farm and fell in love at the tender age of sixteen and she and Eli Eugene Gourdin were married in 1949 and in 1950 their first daughter was born and over the next ten years they added 4 more girls and two sons. They moved frequently in their early married life and Joan was able to travel to some beautiful places with Eli. They later divorced in 1977. Joan stayed at home to raise her children not going out to work until the youngest was a teen. She taught her children all the skills she had learned from her own mother, to cook, clean, sew, can, garden, and to read. She worked in a hospital nursery once while her babies were little. Later she was a cashier, hospital cook at Utah Valley Hospital, secretary and a caregiver for children and the elderly. She loved books and read almost daily, she enjoyed gardening and “playing in the dirt” as she would say and enjoyed a membership in the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Polly Hancock Handcart Company in Roy. She was a lifelong active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She enjoyed serving in the Primary, Young Women’s program, Girls Camp, and Relief Society. She even served as a Primary President in her 70’s. She last served as a temple ordinance worker at the Ogden Temple. She enjoyed caring for and serving others and showed her family how to do this all the days of her life. She was preceded in death by her parents Wilford and Olive Gillespie, sisters Joyce Mortensen and Valdis Roth, brother Roger Gillespie, daughter Jody Eastman, son Thomas Gourdin, and grandchildren Baby Jerimiah Gourdin, Daniel Eastman, Alicia Bateman, Seth Lucas, and Norman Worden. She is survived by 5 children, Anna (Michael) Harris, Willy Gourdin, Laurie Gourdin, Carla Gourdin, and Nancy (Brenda) Worden. She was grandma to 24, grandma great to 65, and great grandma to 16 and one on the way. She loved all her posterity. The family appreciates the care of Rocky Mountain Hospice for almost two years. Especially Bonnie RN, Shauna RN, and CAN’s Ryan, Yesse, Raylynn, Brooke, Sutherland, Allison, and Shawna. Our mother felt loved by these caregivers and they made it possible for Joan to stay in her daughter Nancy’s home. Her services will be held at LDS Stake Center at 90 N 600 W Orem, Utah at 11:00 am. Her interment will be at East Lawn Memorial Hills in Provo directly following the service. Light luncheon back at church after. Serenity Funeral Homes Bluffdale, Utah.