Trevor Christensen Biography

Distributed to all recipients of the Trevor & Clover Christensen Scholarship, which is awarded at Brigham Young University – Hawaii Campus.

When Trevor was a very young child, his older sister worked at the telephone company. She worked late at night, and in the cold winter months, she would have Trevor come down to the office and sleep on her feet to keep them warm!

He attended elementary and secondary schools in Ephraim, and even though he missed most of the second grade due to poor health, by the time he got into high school, he received high grades and was student body president. He played the trombone and sang in the school choir. He graduated from Snow College (a two-year course) and then attended Brigham Young University for one year. With these three years of college, he was able to teach. His first teaching position took him to Owyhee, Nevada, where he taught in the Indian School. He was really a jack-of-all-trades type of teacher. Not only did he teach fourth grade, but he also taught shop and chorus, and anything else they wanted him to.

Trevor met his beautiful wife, Clover Barnard, shortly after he graduated from Snow College. He had gone to Idaho to sell knitted clothing and met her in a beauty shop. She attended BYU at the same time he was there, and he had the privilege of baptizing her and her brother into the Mormon Church. They were married in the Manti Temple in 1938. They had two children, a son, Doug, who lives in Richfield, Utah, and drives the bookmobile for the state, and a daughter, Deanna Henderson, who recently moved from Circleville, Utah, to Montana.

After one year in Nevada, they moved to Logan, Utah, where he taught fourth grade. He had forty-four students, including three sets of twins, in his class. Later he taught seminary and Jr. High music in Logan and then seminary in South Cache. While in Logan, he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees and started working on his Ph.D. However, he did not complete his PhD. Altogether, he taught in the Logan area for eighteen years.

In 1955, he was sent to Richfield, Utah, to be principal of the seminary there and supervisor over all of the seminaries from Nephi south. While in Richfield, he and his wife purchased a motel, and she and the children ran it. In 1960, Boyd K. Packer came to Richfield and asked Trevor to go to Hawaii and start the institute program from the Church College of Hawaii. They really loved their stay in Hawaii for five years. In fact, Trevor says of all the places he has been in the world, Hawaii is his very favorite. The first Sunday after arriving in Hawaii, he was called to be a member of the High Council for the Church. He was in charge of the music for the stake also. One of the highlights of his life was when Ezra Taft Benson came to Hyrum and set him apart as a High Priest and Stake clerk. When they left Hawaii, they had been given enough leis to enable them to give one to every person on the plane.

They left Hawaii in 1965, and he began teaching New Testament courses at BYU. He was also the International Student Advisor. While at BYU, he and his family moved to Springville. They built a beautiful home that was faced with rock, which they had gathered in Ephraim and Mayfield. They did most of the construction on the house themselves. They both really enjoyed this experience.

In 1975, he and Clover went to Ecuador to serve a mission for the LDS Church. After they returned, he retired from BYU, and he and his wife worked in the Provo Temple for 11 years. She died from cancer in 1986. In 1987, he met June Healy Ashby, and they married in April 1988. June developed chronic leukemia and Alzheimer's disease. June’s children insisted on taking her to St. George to take care of her. This caused problems in the marriage, and they were divorced in 1991.

Trevor has traveled extensively in many countries, including Israel, Germany, England, Hawaii, and the Scandinavian countries. He loved to read, bowl, and dance and really enjoyed preparing and presenting audio-visual aids in the classes he taught. He has been a counselor in the bishopric, served on six High Councils, taught Sunday School, and was Music Director and Stake Chorister, as well as teaching chorus in many wards. He was a fun person to talk to and had a lot of neat stories to tell.