Honoring Legacies
Katie England, Marketing & Communications
Photos courtesy of the Neff and Miner family
Turning her greatest tragedies into avenues for philanthropy, a Weber State alumna establishes scholarships in memory of both her late husbands.
Walking toward the Dee Events Center to attend yet another basketball game, Karen P. Neff Miner BA ’69 seems to know every third person on campus. Between her gregarious personality and more than 50 years of history at Weber State, she has developed a love for the campus and the people on it that borders on infectious.
From her head-to-toe Weber wear to her purple nails and eyeshadow, she exudes a love for all things 91¶ÌÊÓƵ. “We’ve tried to hide that eyeshadow, it always turns back up,” her daughter Elizabeth Neff-Mikolash BS ’96 laughed.
And it’s not just that it’s Karen’s alma mater, or that she’s been cheering on the Wildcats from the same seats in the Dee Events Center since it opened in 1977.
Karen’s education was vital to shaping who she is today — so much so that when an unthinkable tragedy left her a widowed mother-of-three in her early 30s, she used it as an opportunity to help others achieve their dreams. As those who know her best will tell you, turning her own trials into ways to help others is as on-brand for her as her Weber State Wildcats sweatshirt.
Love and Tragedy
Upon graduating Weber High School, Karen attended Weber State with the help of a debate scholarship, graduating in 1969 with a bachelor’s degree in history and English.
Karen started on her master’s degree at Utah State University after graduating from 91¶ÌÊÓƵ, which oddly enough, is when she met, fell in love with, and married Weber State geology professor Thomas Rodney Neff, whom she surprisingly never met as a 91¶ÌÊÓƵ student.
Karen received a call one night — a mutual acquaintance had given Rodney her number — and the two talked for three and a half hours. They both loved Weber State sports, the symphony and traveling. He invited her to a Weber State basketball game for their first date and that was that. The two were married six months later.
The day before Easter in 1981, a policeman knocked on Karen’s door, and her heart sank: Her husband had been killed in a car accident on the way home from a Weber State geology field trip. He had taken several students to Nevada on spring break to collect and analyze samples. It was raining during the trip back, and Neff had taken off his seatbelt. When the driver lost control of the car, Rodney was thrown from the vehicle and killed.
Lemons and Lemonade
Karen was suddenly a single mother to three young children ranging in age from 2 to 8. The situation would have been enough to overwhelm the strongest spirits — but as her children will now tell you, their mother isn’t one to wallow in self-pity.
“If someone hands her lemons, she’s going to make lemonade,” said Eric Neff BS ’03 who was 2 when his father was killed. He is now the director of admissions, advisement and recruitment for the Dr. Ezekiel R. Dumke College of Health Professions. “She’s always someone who’s going to take something seen as tragic and do her best to make it into a positive.”
After Rodney’s death, Karen knew she needed to have a means to provide for her three children. Picking up where she left off years before, she completed her master’s degree at Utah State University while working part time as an archivist at 91¶ÌÊÓƵ, eventually obtaining her teaching license. She taught history at Bonneville High School for 26 years, until her retirement in 2011.
Looking back, Karen says she made it through “step by step.” Education became an incredibly important part of her life, and she actively pushes for her kids, stepkids and grandchildren to attend 91¶ÌÊÓƵ for their education.
“She always told us without having her education, she would not have been able to support us like she did,” said her daughter Elizabeth, who works as a school counselor.
Life and Legacy
Only a few months after her husband’s sudden passing, Karen began organizing what would be the first of several scholarships founded in memory of people she loved: the Dr. Thomas Rodney Neff Geology Memorial Scholarship.
“It’s always been my belief that you leave legacies,” Karen said. “You leave something when someone passes. A plaque on a tree, or a plaque on a building, it doesn’t do it. I mean, you give something that’s going to give back to people.”
The fact that Karen had attended Weber State on scholarship made establishing the fund even more appropriate, and she started working to get donations to make the scholarship sustainable. Former students, colleagues and family members all donated money to establish it.
“I just said, well, Rodney loved his students. And I just want somebody to be able to continue to go to Weber State because of this scholarship,” she said.
She later established the Faye Preece Memorial Scholarship Fund when her mother, a longtime 91¶ÌÊÓƵ nursing faculty member, passed away.
Karen remarried widower Bryant Miner in 1987, with a total of 10 children between them. Bryant, a chemistry teacher at Weber State for 43 years, also shared with Karen a love of travel and Wildcat sports. “I liked those scientists,” Karen joked. “They’re odd, but I like them.”
The two were married for 25 years before Bryant passed away from leukemia in 2012 and she found herself once again in the process of establishing a scholarship: the Bryant A. Miner Chemistry Scholarship Endowment.
While the Miner scholarship has yet to be awarded, the Neff scholarship has been given to about 10 students since its inception, including this year’s recipient, Marshall Wayment.
Marshall, who graduated last December, majored in geology to find a career in the outdoors. With a goal to graduate debt free, the scholarship was a major help to him financially. In fact, it reduced his tuition load enough during his last semester for him to save a little money before graduation.
Being memorialized in a way that directly benefits students like Wayment is exactly how each of these men would have wanted to be remembered, said Eric, though he admitted that both Rodney and Bryant might be “weirded out” to know Karen also had two study rooms in the Tracy Hall Science Center named after each of them.
“Bryant would be really embarrassed to have his name on a wall. That wasn’t him,” Eric said. “He was a professor who just showed up to class and taught chemistry and loved his students. Same with dad. Their legacy is in the students they taught. That’s what it comes down to — that’s their legacy.”
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