Kent William Huff

Kent William Huff

1941 ~ 2026

Kent William Huff, our beloved father, brother, grandfather, and friend, left this world in June 2026. 

Friday, July 10, 2026

Viewing: 10:00am - 12:00pm

Northridge Stake Center Chapel

1674 North 200 West Orem, Utah 84057

Interment: 1:00pm 

Spanish Fork Cemetery

Saturday, July 18, 2026

Open house: 10:00 - 11:30am

Memorial service: 11:30am 

Northridge Stake Center Chapel

1674 North 200 West Orem, Utah 84057

Video streaming link to below:

https://zoom.us/j/99786810093#success

Kent William Huff was a life-long student of politics, economics, and religion. He was always thinking deeply, trying to understand a problem and figure out a way to solve it. He was hard-working, kind-hearted, generous, friendly, and always up for a good conversation or a healthy debate. He was a dedicated husband and father. He instilled a love of learning in all of his children.

Kent was never without a pencil and paper to write down a thought or an idea that came to him. He wrote three books in his life and had the manuscript of a fourth. He was always reading something new, typically non-fiction books, but he also enjoyed a good science fiction novel. He was very frugal, and usually the only things he was interested in spending money on were books.

A love of music was a constant thread in his life. When he was very young, he and his younger sister were asked to sing at weddings, and at 7 and 5 years old they would dress up in a white dress and a tuxedo with short pants, one time being paid $5 whole dollars! “There’ll be friends throwing rice, there’ll be apple jack on ice…Tomorrow morning is my weddin’ day!” As a young man, he learned to play the trumpet. He was the drum major for his high school marching band. As an adult, he sang with his family around the piano, while his wife Suzanne played. He sang with the Mormon Choir of Washington for several years, along with countless ward choirs. He also loved listening to a wide range of popular music: rock and roll, barbershop, doowop, country, and even some reggae. He was great at singing doowop bass.

Born in 1941 in Payson, Utah, to William (Bill) and Kathryn Isaac Huff, Kent was the oldest of 5 children. He grew up in the small rural community of Leland, west of Spanish Fork, Utah. He grew up playing baseball and “Annie-I-over” with all the kids in the neighborhood, swimming in the irrigation ditches, and riding bicycles. His family raised mink, turkeys, pigs, chickens, and Rosie the Guernsey cow. He and his sister would gather watercress and asparagus from the irrigation ditches. When older he would do the back-breaking work of clearing the ditches with a shovel in the Spring, and throughout the year. He said they would regularly hunt pheasant (only in season!... mostly), which was also the way their ward would make their budget for the year: selling permits for hunting in the fields of Leland. 

As the family grew, Kent helped his dad build a bigger house when he was about 10 years old. He remembers helping set up the forms for the concrete foundation with some of the other workers and having a near miss with a really long drill!

Kent’s father started a trucking business, William B. Huff Trucking, when Kent was young, which meant he grew up learning to work on and drive the big trucks. When his dad would arrive home from a trip, regardless of the weather or the temperatures, Kent would be out under the truck in the driveway doing maintenance so the truck was ready to get back out on the road. When he was 16, he was even driving a truck to Arizona with a load during a break from school. They hauled all kinds of products including salt licks for cattle, cotton seed, and watermelon (and they got to enjoy eating the broken ones). Kent remained handy and mechanically savvy throughout his life.

Kent graduated from Spanish Fork High School at the top of his class. After high school, he served in the Army National Guard. When he returned home, his parents encouraged him to go to college. He was accepted to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and he remembers his mother would bring casseroles to his apartment to help out.

After about a year and a half at BYU, he took some time away to serve an LDS mission in Northern California. At that time, mission boundaries were quite large and the Northern California Mission included parts of Nevada. Returning home from his mission, Kent re-enrolled at BYU to continue his studies and got a good paying job at Geneva Steel. 

One day in the BYU library, Kent met a young woman, Suzanne Snow, who was looking up something in the same card catalog drawer. They chatted about the topics they each were researching. The way Suzanne told the story, when she turned to leave,  Kent said to her, “I know everything about you except your name!” She teased him back, “You don't know everything about me!” and began to walk away. Before she turned the corner, she paused and told him her name. Kent went home that day and told his sister, “I've met the girl I'm going to marry.” The rest is history. Kent and Suzanne were married in the Los Angeles LDS temple in April 1966.

The two of them were life partners through multiple moves and six children, through thick and thin. Once when describing what she loved about Kent, Suzanne said simply, “He let me, be me.”

His job at Geneva Steel supported both himself and his wife as they finished their university studies. He graduated from BYU with a double major in Political Science and Mathematics and was accepted to The George Washington University Law School, in Washington D.C. He and Suzanne drove their two cars, a Volkswagen van and a Karmann Ghia, across the country. They lived in Alexandria, Virginia while Kent attended law school at night. He received his Juris Doctor and also went on to receive a Master of Laws in taxation. He was a member of both the Virginia State Bar and the District of Columbia Bar. His mother loved to address her letters to Dr. Huff when writing to him. He maintained his bar memberships throughout his life.

Education was very important to Kent. When Kent proposed to Suzanne, he committed to supporting her in finishing her degree. When they had children, they began saving money for each of them to be able to attend college. When the kids were young, they had “required reading” every Sunday, passages in books that were challenging for their age, with topics like natural history, international studies, or “Jesus the Christ” by James E. Talmage. 

After graduating from law school and while working at the Dept. of the Navy, Kent was offered the opportunity to take a computer training course. This training sparked his interest in computers and led to his career as a computer systems analyst and computer programmer. He learned many computer languages and worked on all generations of computers – mainframes, punch cards, and beyond. 

Kent’s computer specialization opened up many new and interesting opportunities. In 1979, Kent left the Association of American Railroads and took a job with the U.S. Census Bureau that started their wild international adventures, beginning with their move to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. At the time of that move, they had 4 children. During their time in Saudi Arabia, they had their last two children. While in Saudi Arabia, church meetings were held in their home (on Friday, since that is the Islamic weekly holy day). Kent and Suzanne served in every calling imaginable in their LDS branch and ward in Riyadh, including Kent as bishop, and enjoyed the friendship of people from all over the world, such as the Philippines, Denmark, U.K., Lebanon, and Singapore. During their time in Saudi Arabia, Kent and his family also traveled through western Europe, Middle East, and parts of Asia. 

While in Saudi Arabia, Kent started eating fresh pita bread with hot fudge, a precursor to his proclivity to eating a delicious hazelnut and chocolate confection called Nutella with a spoon. Always just a little bit at a time! Today, Nutella is commonly found in grocery stores and at hotel breakfast bars across the United States, but in the late 70s and early 80s, Nutella could only be found in Europe and nearby countries.

After nine years in Saudi Arabia, Kent’s family moved back to the USA and lived in Springfield, Virginia. He worked for the U.S. Department of the Treasury and then joined the State Department Foreign Service. After four years in Virginia, the Huffs were off to their next international adventure. They moved to Mexico City, Mexico for three years. This was one of the family’s favorite places. They discovered new and interesting places to visit and learn about, enjoyed the food, and the family traveled to many archaeological sites and museums. From Mexico, they headed to Moscow, Russia for the next two years. They traveled to Saint Petersburg and Ukraine. 

While Kent was in his office in Moscow one day, someone fired a rocket propelled grenade at the embassy office building. The explosive was aimed to hit the main communication center of the embassy offices, just one floor below where Kent’s office was located. Luckily, there was a large copier/printer in its path. The explosion damaged the building and the copier was destroyed, but no one was injured. 

Kent was offered one final post in Tel Aviv, Israel, but he decided he was ready for a change from his career in federal service. They moved back to the USA and settled in Utah to be near family. He quickly got a job with Bell Atlantic, working on a system-wide solution to the Y2K problem. He travelled back and forth between Virginia and Utah for about 2 years. After this last job, Kent was ready to retire to pursue his own intellectual interests. 

By the end of his career, Kent had worked for 8 federal agencies: Navy, US House of Representatives, Dept. of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, Interstate Commerce Commission, Census Bureau, Treasury Dept., and State Dept. In his retirement years, Kent kept busy. He continued writing, finishing his third book and had a manuscript of his fourth. He was involved with his grandkids' lives – taking them to school, to summer camps, to choir practice, and sharing his favorite music with them. He was a real favorite with his grandkids. They loved to take him out on mini-adventures, like bowling, candy-making, and trying new foods. 

Kent began life as a country boy in rural Utah. He drew on the early lessons he learned of hard work, generosity, and dedication, and became someone who had three post-high school degrees, was an early adopter of and professional with computers, had incredible adventures, lived overseas in three countries with vastly differing cultures, and helped to raise a close-knit family.  

Kent leaves behind his six children, Emily (Nate), Benjamin, Andrew (Danielle), Marjorie (Jared), Merryl (Patrick), and Jonathan (Jessica); his nine beloved grandchildren Rosie, Max, Eric, Joseph, Elsa, Peter, Ellen, Daniel, and Matthew; and his siblings Judith, Garth, Steven, and Janene. He joins his departed wife, Suzanne, and his parents, Bill and Kathryn. 

His family misses him intensely. He left us too suddenly and too soon.

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